Libreoffice has great support for styles in its backend but the GUI seems to try very hard to discourage good practices, especially about character styles. I would like to propose two changes, which would strongly improve the situation for me: * I am not aware of any way to apply character styles without going through the style dialog. A toolbar button for character styles would be of great value for me. It would fit well in the formatting toolbar (can be hidden by default) * the "clear direct formatting" action removes direct formatting, but also character styles, which is very annoying when trying to maintain a "clean" document. It could be changed to preserve character styles, but then I imagine that some people will ask for a "clean all character formatting" action, so we probably need both. On a related note, character style are completely absent from the GUI in impress, which is quite frustrating as well!
(In reply to comment #0) > I would like to propose two changes, which would strongly improve > the situation for me: You are going to have to pick one. One issue per bug is the policy. This will become clearer in my comments that follow. > * I am not aware of any way to apply character styles without going through > the style dialog. The new sidebar (active by default under v4.2.0) contains the styles and formatting dialog. > A toolbar button for character styles would be of great > value for me. It would fit well in the formatting toolbar (can be hidden by > default) This is an enhancement request and seems to be the main concern of this report. More detail on the exact nature of this proposal is required to determine if it would be a worthwhile feature to have (or not). Status set to NEEDINFO until this detail is provided. > * the "clear direct formatting" action removes direct formatting, but also > character styles I cannot confirm this under v4.1.4.2 (or earlier versions). Character styles are preserved when using the suggested action.
(In reply to comment #1) > > * the "clear direct formatting" action removes direct formatting, but also > > character styles > > I cannot confirm this under v4.1.4.2 (or earlier versions). Character styles > are preserved when using the suggested action. This is indeed fixed now, perfect!
Aurelien, as a result of comment 2, can we close this report?
> > * I am not aware of any way to apply character styles without going through > > the style dialog. > > The new sidebar (active by default under v4.2.0) contains the styles and > formatting dialog. This is indeed a step in a good direction for me, but it still requires a sidebar which takes up lots of space. > > A toolbar button for character styles would be of great > > value for me. It would fit well in the formatting toolbar (can be hidden by > > default) > > This is an enhancement request and seems to be the main concern of this > report. More detail on the exact nature of this proposal is required to > determine if it would be a worthwhile feature to have (or not). Status set > to NEEDINFO until this detail is provided. What I suggest here is to duplicate for character styles the toolbar item which allows to apply paragraph styles. I would like to be able to remove all toolbar buttons for "local character formatting" (bold, underline, text color...) and just have a combobox for paragraph styles and one for character styles. Once the styles are defined this would allow to use styles for all formatting in a consistent way (which is quite important for scientific papers or anything where one wants some kind of "semantic" formatting. Let me know what extra information would be needed if any, and what I can do to help (I can code, but I have limited time at the moment, and no knowledge of the codebase).
(In reply to comment #4) > This is indeed a step in a good direction for me, but it still requires a > sidebar which takes up lots of space. This is probably not the bug report for this issue (about improving character styles). > What I suggest here is to duplicate for character styles the toolbar item > which allows to apply paragraph styles. I would like to be able to remove > all toolbar buttons for "local character formatting" (bold, underline, text > color...) and just have a combobox for paragraph styles and one for > character styles. Toolbars do not provide access to styles (and never have). They offer direct (non-style) formatting for elements in a document. The design team are talking about possibly having parts of the sidebar detach in a launch/retrieve manner (presumably to a toolbar / micro-panel like arrangement. The result (as I understand it) will be the combining of the sidebar and toolbar into a single functionality. This may be what you are (generally) referring to? The discussion can be found here: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/The-Sidebar-Problem-td4094331.html
(In reply to comment #5) > (In reply to comment #4) > > This is indeed a step in a good direction for me, but it still requires a > > sidebar which takes up lots of space. > > This is probably not the bug report for this issue (about improving > character styles). The title may not be the best: character styles are great in libreoffice, the issue is about improving the way handle them. > > What I suggest here is to duplicate for character styles the toolbar item > > which allows to apply paragraph styles. I would like to be able to remove > > all toolbar buttons for "local character formatting" (bold, underline, text > > color...) and just have a combobox for paragraph styles and one for > > character styles. > > Toolbars do not provide access to styles (and never have). They offer direct > (non-style) formatting for elements in a document. It's just not true: the toolbar always included a combobox for paragraph styles, which I use a lot. The very point of this report for me is to point out that a way to quickly apply character styles without keeping a huge sidebar open is missing. > The design team are > talking about possibly having parts of the sidebar detach in a > launch/retrieve manner (presumably to a toolbar / micro-panel like > arrangement. The result (as I understand it) will be the combining of the > sidebar and toolbar into a single functionality. This may be what you are > (generally) referring to? The discussion can be found here: > > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/The-Sidebar-Problem-td4094331.html It looks like an interesting direction, and maybe one that could solve this issue if implemented properly, but I'm affraid it is a better solution to EDIT styles that to simply apply them (many publications, technical reports and so on have strict rules about how to format this or that kind of text, some even provide templates with pre-defined styles for this kind of things. Unfortunately, most text processors make it much harder to apply styles than to use manual formatting (unless you typeset in LaTeX or HTML+CSS!). LibreOffice can (and IMHO should) change this.
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #5) > > Toolbars do not provide access to styles (and never have). They offer direct > > (non-style) formatting for elements in a document. > > It's just not true: the toolbar always included a combobox for paragraph > styles, which I use a lot. > > The very point of this report for me is to point out that a way to quickly > apply character styles without keeping a huge sidebar open is missing. Apologies Aurelien. I don't know what I was thinking of when I wrote that (I think it was too late at night here). You are quite correct. In the context of my further point about what the design team are considering, your original point about improving /access/ to character styles seems fair. It is always a challenge to provide access to an increasing number of items without increasing the amount of screen used.