Bug 70384 - [FORMATTING] Patterns not available as cell background for tables
Summary: [FORMATTING] Patterns not available as cell background for tables
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsDevEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Writer-Tables-Enhancements Object-Fill-Pattern
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Reported: 2013-10-11 17:43 UTC by Camaleón
Modified: 2024-02-07 18:25 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

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Description Camaleón 2013-10-11 17:43:59 UTC
I've noticed there's no option in Writer to use a predefined pattern as background for table cells and only two options are currently available:

1/ Use a solid color
2/ Use a predefined image

While these can be enough for most scenarios, I miss one more option: using predefined simple bitmap patterns (like these¹) such as other office suites provide (e.g., MS Office). 

A side effect of lacking for this option is that opening a .doc file coming from MS Word that uses such patterns as background in tables is that it displays in Writer as a solid gray cell thus breaking the original formatting.

¹http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/docs/images/gipd7.gif
Comment 1 Cor Nouws 2013-10-30 21:00:16 UTC
Hi Camaleón,

thanks for the issue > set to new.

You know that you can set an image as background, but apparently that does not help with opening MsDocuments ?
Best,
Cor
Comment 2 Camaleón 2013-10-30 21:44:21 UTC
Yes, that's the point. 

Manually changing one document is an easy task but having to make a bunch of conversions can be overwhelming and given the fact there's already an option for using simple bitmap patterns as background for objects it would be nice having such feature also for tables.
Comment 3 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2015-10-05 03:38:49 UTC
It should be noted that gradient and hatching are also not supported and the bitmap support doesnt provide access to the bitmap presets.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2016-09-12 13:05:30 UTC
With the latest changes of the Area Fill dialog it should be easy to have all those features as well in this dialog. EASYHACK?
Comment 5 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2016-09-12 23:26:18 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4)
> With the latest changes of the Area Fill dialog it should be easy to have
> all those features as well in this dialog. EASYHACK?

Yes once all the tabs are merged into the area tab, it can be shown in the dialog rather than the background tab and hopefully it will work without problems.
Comment 6 jani 2016-09-14 06:15:53 UTC
Code pointer, skill<foo>, difficulty<foo> needs to be added
Comment 7 Xisco Faulí 2016-09-27 10:36:14 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 8 Ekansh Jha 2018-01-31 14:20:31 UTC
Hi! Could anyone add the code pointers for this easyHack please.
Comment 9 Regina Henschel 2018-01-31 15:23:35 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4)
> With the latest changes of the Area Fill dialog it should be easy to have
> all those features as well in this dialog. EASYHACK?

I think, gradient and hatch is _no_ easy hack.

Besides the UI, model and rendering changes, loading and saving is deep impacted. The table/row/cell background lives currently in the respective properties as fo:background-color and <style:background-image>. For to save gradient and hatch, changes in the standard are needed. And gradient and hatch are not representable in the current binary table template format. And another aspect is, that there exists at least four different kind of tables: Writer, Calc, table-shape, and presentation-table-shape.

Currently I would suggest as workaround for the original poster to unzip the file standard.sop from share/palette. It contains in a subfolder "pictures" all these predefined pattern images, which then can be reached by the current table background dialog.
Comment 10 Xisco Faulí 2020-03-09 13:28:02 UTC
Please add keyword 'needsUXEval' and CC 'libreoffice-ux-advise@lists.freedesktop.org' if input from UX is needed.
Comment 11 Justin L 2024-02-07 18:25:57 UTC
repro 24.8+