Bug 65911 - Predefined keyboard shortcuts needed for char/para/page style dialogs
Summary: Predefined keyboard shortcuts needed for char/para/page style dialogs
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.0.3.3 release
Hardware: Other All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: target:7.4.0
Keywords: accessibility, difficultyBeginner, easyHack, skillDesign, topicUI
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y-Windows Shortcuts-Accelerators
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2013-06-18 20:02 UTC by paulshoenfeld
Modified: 2023-07-11 19:39 UTC (History)
15 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
half-finished addon to assign MS Office 2003 shortcuts to LibreOffice (2.38 KB, application/vnd.openofficeorg.extension)
2013-10-09 21:21 UTC, lee.eden
Details

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Description paulshoenfeld 2013-06-18 20:02:39 UTC
Problem description: 

Steps to reproduce:
1. ....Ctrl D
2. ....Ctrl S
3. ....

Current behavior:No Affect

Expected behavior: Should bring up the 'Font' Dialog Box (Ctrl D) as a key shortcut to change fonts.  After Ctrl D is input, adding Ctrl S should bring the cursor directly to the font 'Size' input box in order to change the font size.  ALSO, please check out and add additional keystroke inputs (as found in Microsoft Office Word) in order to assist me and other sight-impaired and blind users.  This would be very much appreciated.

              
Operating System: Windows (other)
Version: 4.0.3.3 release
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2013-06-19 00:21:03 UTC
Confirming the reported behavior, but the actual Microsoft Word keyboard accelerator is <Ctrl>+D followed by <Alt>+S

However, the same keyboard accelerator function is also provided in LibreOffice with <Alt>+O followed by <Alt>+H to launch the Character dialog, and then <TAB>, <TAB> & <TAB> to position into the Size tool (LODev 4.2.0 is missing accelerators for each attribute on the panel). But, should it have an alias of <Ctrl>+D and <Alt>+S?

So not really a bug, but I am marking this an enhancement issue, and setting UX-Advise whiteboard. LibreOffice already provides a robust set of keyboard accelerators distinct from those provided by the Microsoft Office products, and expanded with its cumbersome Ribbon GUI implementation from Office 2007 onward.

Keyboard accelerators are not agreed to or set by any standard, but reasonable accommodations in interest of interoperability/common use are certainly possible to adopt for LibreOffice UX.

But how far to take it and for what use case? Obviously we are not under any obligation to replicate Microsoft's choices, but we do have to be consistent in the keyboard user interface, and ensure that we provide needed capabilities--both for efficient keyboard input, and for support to Assistive Technologies.

=-=-=

These help articles cover state of LibreOffice keyboard accelerators.

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Shortcut_Keys_for_Writer

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Using_Shortcut_Keys_Writer_Accessibility

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Shortcuts_Accessibility

=-=-=

And these MS help articles cover the keyboard shortcuts for the Office products

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-word-HA102748895.aspx
Comment 2 paulshoenfeld 2013-06-20 00:51:27 UTC
Thank you very much.  The below shortcut hyperlinks are >very< helpful.
Paul Shoenfeld

----- Original Message ----- 
From: bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org 
To: paulshoenfeld@cox.net 
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:21 PM
Subject: [Bug 65911] Keyboard accelerator & shortcut assignments -- review divergence from MS Word for reasonable common use cases [accessibility]


V Stuart Foote changed bug 65911 
      What Removed Added 
      Status UNCONFIRMED  NEW  
      Whiteboard BSA  BSA, UX  
      Severity normal  enhancement  
      CC    gautier.sophie@gmail.com, mariosv@miguelangel.mobi, michael.meeks@novell.com, vstuart.foote@utsa.edu  
      Summary FORMATTING: Accessibility Problem  Keyboard accelerator & shortcut assignments -- review divergence from MS Word for reasonable common use cases [accessibility]  
      Ever confirmed    1  


Comment # 1 on bug 65911 from V Stuart Foote 
Confirming the reported behavior, but the actual Microsoft Word keyboard
accelerator is <Ctrl>+D followed by <Alt>+S

However, the same keyboard accelerator function is also provided in LibreOffice
with <Alt>+O followed by <Alt>+H to launch the Character dialog, and then
<TAB>, <TAB> & <TAB> to position into the Size tool (LODev 4.2.0 is missing
accelerators for each attribute on the panel). But, should it have an alias of
<Ctrl>+D and <Alt>+S?

So not really a bug, but I am marking this an enhancement issue, and setting
UX-Advise whiteboard. LibreOffice already provides a robust set of keyboard
accelerators distinct from those provided by the Microsoft Office products, and
expanded with its cumbersome Ribbon GUI implementation from Office 2007 onward.

Keyboard accelerators are not agreed to or set by any standard, but reasonable
accommodations in interest of interoperability/common use are certainly
possible to adopt for LibreOffice UX.

But how far to take it and for what use case? Obviously we are not under any
obligation to replicate Microsoft's choices, but we do have to be consistent in
the keyboard user interface, and ensure that we provide needed
capabilities--both for efficient keyboard input, and for support to Assistive
Technologies.

=-=-=

These help articles cover state of LibreOffice keyboard accelerators.

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Shortcut_Keys_for_Writer

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Using_Shortcut_Keys_Writer_Accessibility

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Shortcuts_Accessibility

=-=-=

And these MS help articles cover the keyboard shortcuts for the Office products

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-word-HA102748895.aspx

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Comment 3 lee.eden 2013-10-09 21:20:12 UTC
While understanding a reluctance to be driven by Microsoft's shortcut keys, I do think there is a very valid productivity argument in favour of doing that (as far as reasonably possible). I spend hours each day working in Excel 2003 and I work much faster using keyboard shortcuts than with the mouse - difficult to estimate the productivity delta, but it could well be 20-30%. Reluctantly I am being nudged towards using the 2007+ versions with their hateful ribbon, but I do find the old shortcuts generally work (though they can be a bit slow). When I come home and do some stuff in LibreOffice I find myself slowing right down and find it hard to imagine that I could ever really transition full-time away from Excel primarily for this reason. The most obviously missing shortcut is F~ormat>C~ells and most time-consuming dialog difference is Paste Special (~values).

LibreOffice is missing a trick here as I am not the only die-hard Excel 2003 user who has an extreme dislike of the ribbon, and Microsoft really will "turn off" the 2003 version before long leaving us stranded and looking desperately around for a spreadsheet application with a less dictatorial approach to user interface. I know that I can user-define my own shortcuts, but this is a lot of work for every linux upgrade or multiple computers I use. I started to write the attached add-on 3-4 years ago which does half-do the job of reassigning shortcuts, but can no longer remember how exactly to finish it - could anyone advise/help with that?

My feature request would be a tick-box in the options for "Office 2003 shortcuts", and I don't think this would be so hard to do. I would be very pleased to help do the leg-work of mapping it out, coding etc. Calc is my main interest, but also Draw, Impress and Write have the same issue.
Comment 4 lee.eden 2013-10-09 21:21:31 UTC
Created attachment 87354 [details]
half-finished addon to assign MS Office 2003 shortcuts to LibreOffice
Comment 5 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2013-10-23 18:42:17 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 6 Timur 2017-05-12 18:12:55 UTC
Like I recently saw a bug for equivalent shortcuts.
Comment 7 Michael Warner 2021-03-12 15:50:31 UTC
There is the ability to manually assign shortcuts and load/save them into files using the Keyboard tab in Tools->Customize. It would be a lot more convenient for users though if LO included pre-made profiles with keybindings that correspond to other popular office software and could be easily selected. This is a common feature in IDEs, for example.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2021-03-15 09:56:44 UTC
(In reply to Michael Warner from comment #7)
> There is the ability to manually assign shortcuts and load/save them into
> files using the Keyboard tab in Tools->Customize. It would be a lot more
> convenient for users though if LO included pre-made profiles with
> keybindings that correspond to other popular office software and could be
> easily selected. This is a common feature in IDEs, for example.

See bug 123768, easyhackable and deployable via extension.
Comment 9 Heiko Tietze 2021-03-18 11:24:20 UTC
We discussed this topic in the design meeting. There are some objections: first of all we do not just copy MSO, although consistent shortcuts make sense. But ctrl+D is quite unrelated to the character style (aka font setting)- and it is occupied by double underline. Plus, there is no shortcut for the paragraph style.

However, we agree on the relevance and suggest to use alt+C for character style (.uno:FontDialog), alt+P for the paragraph style (.uno:ParagraphDialog), and shift+alt+p for page style (.uno:PageDialog).

This is easy hackable in officecfg/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Accelerators.xcu
Comment 10 sdc.blanco 2022-04-10 15:34:20 UTC
https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/132705
Comment 11 Justin L 2022-04-21 10:02:31 UTC
Alt-C was used for Unicode toggling in some locales since LO 5.1 via bug 73691.
Comment 12 Commit Notification 2022-05-25 10:12:06 UTC
Seth Chaiklin committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/856887cbc8a0a2fd04b90ee2170948d34c8ff9c4

tdf#65911 add accelerators for style editing

It will be available in 7.4.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 13 Heiko Tietze 2022-05-27 08:55:32 UTC
Seth's patch assigned the shortcuts

          Alt+C - character style
          Alt+P - paragraph style
    Shift+Alt+P - page style

It clashes with "Toggle Unicode Notation", at least with kf5, and Alt+C is not working. It does well under Windows and depends on the language. Some hints how to solve the problem are discussed on the patch.
Comment 14 Justin L 2022-05-27 09:07:53 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #13)
> It clashes with "Toggle Unicode Notation", at least with kf5, and Alt+C is
> not working. It does well under Windows and depends on the language. Some
> hints how to solve the problem are discussed on the patch.

I'm not sure why we are closing the issue when there are still known problems and limitations. Also, has it been tested to see if it conflicts with Alt-* menu shortcuts across the various languages? Alt shortcuts are rather dangerous...
Comment 15 Heiko Tietze 2022-05-30 13:37:21 UTC
(In reply to Justin L from comment #14)
> I'm not sure why we are closing the issue...

Patch has been submitted despite not working in all situations. Please verify the fixed patch - and if there are issues open a new ticket.
Comment 16 Buovjaga 2022-05-30 13:39:00 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #15)
> (In reply to Justin L from comment #14)
> > I'm not sure why we are closing the issue...
> 
> Patch has been submitted despite not working in all situations. Please
> verify the fixed patch - and if there are issues open a new ticket.

You yourself listed the issue in comment 13...
Comment 17 Heiko Tietze 2022-05-30 13:41:41 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #16)
> You yourself listed the issue in comment 13...

FTR: Issue is resolved/fixed with the patch. Keep it open, if you want.
Comment 18 Buovjaga 2022-05-30 14:16:03 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #17)
> (In reply to Buovjaga from comment #16)
> > You yourself listed the issue in comment 13...
> 
> FTR: Issue is resolved/fixed with the patch. Keep it open, if you want.

It's fine to keep refining a solution and targeting the same report.

"Issue is resolved/fixed with the patch" - it's not, I was talking about the Alt+C issue.