Bug 170072 - FEATURE REQUEST: Drop Caps: augment "number of characters" option with a "first word"
Summary: FEATURE REQUEST: Drop Caps: augment "number of characters" option with a "fir...
Status: NEEDINFO
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.2.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Paragraph-Drop-Caps
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Reported: 2025-12-20 21:03 UTC by David Lee
Modified: 2025-12-22 11:02 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Description David Lee 2025-12-20 21:03:26 UTC
Description:
Drop Caps seems to lack a "first word" capability.

We have a "number of characters" (upper limit 9).  But that is fixed. Such a style spans multiple short words.  Yet it cuts off in the middle of words of sesquipedalian longitudinal loquacity.

If a user or house style wants a Drop Cap of more than a letter, then "first word" would surely be a highly likely next choice.

Steps to Reproduce:
Feature request: not applicable.

Actual Results:
Feature request: not applicable.

Expected Results:
See description.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
See description.
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2025-12-21 12:29:09 UTC
Reasonable, though unclear if this could impact our OOXML compatibility.

ODF 1.4 19.496 style:length [1] suggests we should implement a 'word:' grouping, rather than just the integer count of characters. Making this already an implementation error?

+1

=-ref-=
[1] https://docs.oasis-open.org/office/OpenDocument/v1.4/OpenDocument-v1.4-part3-schema.html#attribute-style_length
Comment 2 Takenori Yasuda 2025-12-21 13:54:13 UTC
I just want to confirm — is the proposed feature this one?

Paragraph > Drop Caps > Settings > Whole word
https://help.libreoffice.org/25.8/en-GB/text/swriter/01/05030400.html
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2025-12-22 10:41:19 UTC
(In reply to Takenori Yasuda from comment #2)
> I just want to confirm...
Indeed, this seems to be the only reasonable but existing property for the request.

Drop caps can have a _height_ of double to 9 lines, can span a fix width of 1 to 9 characters or take the whole word. I see no room for improvements.

If you have a real use case, please tell us. Something like "I want to achieve <foo> by doing <bar> but <baz> hinders me." The more concrete example the better we can advice.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2025-12-22 11:02:14 UTC
(In reply to David Lee from bug 170006 comment #0)
> From https://creativepro.com/designing-lead-ins/
This is a use case. And now it's clear what you mean with "number of words with drop caps": you do some lead-in to a text. I'm against more complexity and recommend to use manually applied character styles for this purpose.