Steps to reproduce: ------------------- 1. Open the Styles and Formatting panel by pressing F11. In Paragraph styles, find "Default", right click on it and select "New...". 2. Name your new style "MyStyle". Leave all settings unchanged, apart from the font. Change the font to something other than that which Default uses. 3. In the document, type two paragraphs of example text, formatting one of them as Default and one of them as MyStyle. Their only different should be the font. 4. You are able to increase the font-size of both Styles and paragraphs by right clicking on Default in the Styles and Formatting panel, clicking "Modify...", changing the Size setting on the Font tab, then clicking OK on the Paragraph Style: Default dialogue. 5. However, there is no way to indicate that you wish to have MyStyle use Default's font settings again. Once the font has been changed in MyStyle, it can never again defer to or inherit from its "Linked With" style (in this case the Default style)for this property. Proposed solution: ------------------ A) Each tab on the "Paragraph Style: <Style>" dialogue box should have a "Clear All" button. This would clear all manual settings for all properties on that tab, allowing the style to "fall back" to the settings for the Style's "Linked With" or parent Style. or B) Each control for each property in the "Paragraph Style: <Style>" should have a setting which explicitly defers to the "Linked With" or parent Style. - For drop-down menus, this could be a bracketed phrase like "[As StyleFoo]" at the start or end of the list. - It's harder to conceive of a good way to present this option for radio buttons, checkboxes etc, without adding an option to each of these lists, which would take up a lot of space.
Additional thoughts re: proposed solution B ------------------------------------------- - it appears that all radio buttons in the "Paragraph Style: <Style>" dialogue box currently always have a default option selected. Therefore a way to indicate deferral to the parent style for radio box would be for clicking on a currently-selected option to /remove/ that selection, leaving /nothing/ selected in the optiongroup. I think this would be reasonably clear, and of course would toggle back and forth very easily. - for combo boxes (e.g. "Before indent", "Scale width", etc), I have often instinctively sought to "clear" these values by deleting all text in them, then clicking / tabbing out. At the moment, if there is no text in a combo box when it loses focus, a default value (0.00cm, 100%, etc) is substituted in. I'd suggest that instead this could be taken as an indication that the user wishes to clear that property and defer back to the parent style. The default value can still be easily entered, either by hand or via the "Standard" button in the bottom right of the "Paragraph Style: <Style>" dialogue box, and as I mentioned, I've often tried this method intuitively. - this leaves checkboxes. Obviously they can't be dealt with in the same way as radio buttons, since un-checking a checkbox which is checked in the parent style is a legitimate expression of preference. Altogether I think there are 25 checkbox options in the "Paragraph Style: <Style>" dialogue box: Organizer > AutoUpdate Indents & Spacing > (2 options) Alignment > (2 options) Text flow > (5 options) Asian Typography > (3 options) Font Effects > (5 options) Position > (2 options) Asian Layout > Write in double lines Outline numbering > (2 options) Drop caps > (2 options) Barring any flashes of insight, a "[Clear all]" button is still the best solution I can think of for these. Obviously the "[Clear all]" button would only apply to the currently visible tab, as does the existing "[Standard]" button.
I agree with the fact that this is a bug and with the proposed way of fixing it.
LibreOffice v.3.4.5 - OOO340m1 (Build:502) Xubuntu 10.04 I stumbled upon the same bug tonight. Trying to reset some Heading1 parameter to the one of its Heading parent with no luck. The same appears with Heading2, etc. Proposed solution ----------------- C) Is it not what the "Standard" button is supposed to do? (otherwise I didn't understand the use of that button ;)
LO 3.5.0rc3 Ubuntu 10.4 I just hit "Standard" on every tab on a custom Paragraph Style linked with Default. I ended up with "Contains: White, Transparent + Shadow: Gray, Not Transparent, 0.18cm, No Shadow + don't count lines" on the Organizer tab. Then tried it with Default itself and ended up with: "Contains: Asian text: 11pt + Text aligned to base line + White, Transparent + Shadow: Gray, Not Transparent, 0.18cm, No Shadow + Text direction left-to-right (horizontal)". So it looks like "Standard" isn't clearing everything it could / should. That would be a separate bug though. So, is the "Standard" button actually the answer for how to do this Style "clearing" / "fall-through" thing? If it *is* the solution, I'd suggest changing the label of that button to "Defaults". I realise the terms are very similar, but "Standard" implies that "there are a set of standard property values which will be applied" (kind of a positive action), whereas "Defaults" better implies "put this back the way you found it", which would encompass the idea of unset properties falling-through. To head-off a possible criticism, I would suggest that "Defaults" is not an unreasonably technical or obscure term, so the word "Standard" has no benefit. At the very least, Defaults is a word people /should/ know, gosh darn it!
I'm setting this as NEW instead of UNCONFIRMED and raising it to a medium enhancement. I agree that these extra features would be quite useful for many users :)
I would also love being able to "reset" some style properties, but it should be done without loosing the ability to view the value for inherited properties. Highlighting the properties which are defined explicitly for the style and allowing to "remove" them would be fantastic. It could for example be done with a border, extra buttons on the side... I also think that the style definition dialogs could use a new design in the process. Such work is hard but would get LO into a much better shape for users who care about proper use of style, and maybe convince more users that this is the right way!
Created attachment 94885 [details] Example to generalize in all dialogues concerning formats (char, paragraph, page) Example to generalize in all dialogues concerning formats (font, paragraph, page)
Duplicated of Bug 41316? Anyway, it would be great to see something like this implemented.
(In reply to RGB from comment #8) > Duplicated of Bug 41316? Anyway, it would be great to see something like > this implemented. No not a duplicate.
(In reply to ryan.jendoubi@gmail.com from comment #4) > So it looks like "Standard" isn't clearing everything it could / should. > That would be a separate bug though. Please investigate that yes. > So, is the "Standard" button actually the answer for how to do this Style > "clearing" / "fall-through" thing? Yep :) > If it *is* the solution, I'd suggest changing the label of that button to > "Defaults". I realise the terms are very similar, but "Standard" implies > that "there are a set of standard property values which will be applied" > (kind of a positive action), whereas "Defaults" better implies "put this > back the way you found it", which would encompass the idea of unset > properties falling-through. Looks reasonable to me. I set this report to reflect that wish. Thanks, Cor
My first idea was to streamline the dialog and have this function with Reset (like every other dialog). But Reset affects the current changes and Standard applies the factory settings. That's a bit confusing. So it boils down to the renaming question. And to me it makes not much sense to rename Standard into Default. Consider that all translators need to touch the labels. It just works for me.
If the 'Standard' button isnt working correctly, so is the 'Reset' button. I think 'Clear' is likely the better label as 'Default' sounds like preset values that LO set for the dialog and would be reset to. I think the solution proposed in bug 89826 would ensure that was is cleared is actually cleared.