Bug 70519 - The spelling and grammar checker wavy line is too faint, esp. in hi-res screens
Summary: The spelling and grammar checker wavy line is too faint, esp. in hi-res screens
Status: VERIFIED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: Other All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Heiko Tietze
URL:
Whiteboard: inReleaseNotes:7.3 target:7.3.0
Keywords: accessibility, difficultyMedium, easyHack, topicDesign
: 103337 155332 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: Spell-Checking UX LibO-Enhancements
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2013-10-16 03:14 UTC by Kumāra
Modified: 2023-06-07 13:25 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Hunt Squiggly (15.18 KB, image/gif)
2014-10-20 03:34 UTC, Kumāra
Details
Screenshot (58.75 KB, image/png)
2021-11-11 10:42 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details

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Description Kumāra 2013-10-16 03:14:25 UTC
This a particularly necessary when the lines are very short, e.g., for 2 spaces, for a space and a comma. Current thickness is easy to miss.

A thicker line would also help when checking with the dialog box. Sometimes we need more context than what is shown in the d.box to make a decision. When the line is short, it's frustratingly difficult to find the flagged words in the document. So, a thicker line would be very helpful.
Comment 1 tommy27 2014-10-19 18:41:41 UTC
reverting status to UNCONFIRMED since there was no independent confirmation by other users.

I'm not convinced about your request, so please post a screenshot of one of the cases you describe to persuade me that the spellchecker wavy line is not easy to see.
Comment 2 Kumāra 2014-10-20 03:34:08 UTC
Created attachment 108080 [details]
Hunt Squiggly
Comment 3 Kumāra 2014-10-20 03:34:59 UTC
(In reply to tommy27 from comment #1)
> I'm not convinced about your request, so please post a screenshot of one of
> the cases you describe to persuade me that the spellchecker wavy line is not
> easy to see.

Please see attached.

It's no doubt prompted by my weakening eyesight. Thus, it's a request for an option to make it thicker.
Comment 4 tommy27 2014-10-20 04:51:05 UTC
Ok, from an ACCESSIBILITY point of view your request is legitimate. having the thickness configurable by the user would not harm anyone. people who like the current thickness would keep the current value, while people with eyesight problems could benefit from a thicker value

status NEW. edited summary notes
Comment 5 Kumāra 2014-10-20 06:50:51 UTC
Yes. Thank you very much. :) _/\_
Comment 6 steve krause 2015-05-01 15:34:45 UTC
I agree with the request to add a way to thicken the wavvy line for spell checking in LibreOffice.   I have misspelled "wavy" while I am entering this text and I see it as more prominent in this text editor than I would see it in LibreOffice. 

Keep in mind that higher resolution monitors (2560 x 1440) can resolve a very thin line and it is barely noticable at that very fine size, especially for us old guys.
Comment 7 estani 2016-01-30 12:20:19 UTC
It would be nice to see this happening. The problem is that the marking has no relation with the text size and/or zoom level. It's always one pixel height.

The larger the resolution the more difficult it is to be seen. If this cannot be setup, then make it at least relative to say 10pt/100% zoom (minimal of 1px is ok, though subpixeling would be also an option). At least that way people may zoom in to see the markings if they need to.

To bring this problem to numbers. A 15" wide screen laptop with a resolution of 1920x1080 (is fairly common and what I'm using now) has pixel size of about 180µm (20cm/1080px). That's as large as a thick human hair.

You don't need to have eye problems to need this setup option; just use a high resolution screen.

So this is barely an ACCESSIBILITY problem. (And don't ask for a screen shot, you'll still see that in your resolution with different PPIs) - by the way, new laptops (3200x1800@15,6"-16:9) have a pixel height of 100µm.
Comment 8 Kumāra 2016-02-03 09:51:45 UTC
(In reply to estani from comment #7)
> It would be nice to see this happening. The problem is that the marking has
> no relation with the text size and/or zoom level. It's always one pixel
> height.
<snip>
> You don't need to have eye problems to need this setup option; just use a
> high resolution screen.
> 
> So this is barely an ACCESSIBILITY problem.

I think you've just made it clear that this merits attention. Perhaps we can consider this as more than an enhancement request.
Comment 9 Dominique 2018-12-19 14:48:55 UTC
Despite having been opened almost SIX years from now and found legitimate to fix one year after, this issue still hasn't been considered.

Even if this parameter may be found too minor to deserve an UI access, could we at least have some way to address it?
Comment 10 Thomas Lendo 2019-06-11 20:57:12 UTC
Adding needsUXEval to get the design team on board.

I support the request that especially for short Terms of single characters it's hard to see the red line. But I don't see an option as a good solution. The default settings should fulfill accessibility and UX guidelines without any user action.
Comment 11 Shantanu 2021-06-10 08:12:41 UTC Comment hidden (me-too)
Comment 12 Heiko Tietze 2021-06-14 08:50:34 UTC
Looks to me as this feature is welcome by many. Since we have a good working line for the majority we should introduce an option. My proposal is to do it at LibreOffice > Accessibility "( ) Bold wavy underline for spelling" with the current line width if unchecked and a good alternative for accessible reason.

In case the thin line is too thin on high res screens we should take this into consideration and use some scaling factor.

Could imagine this as a medium difficult easyhack. Michael, do you have an idea where to tweak the line width?
Comment 13 Michael Stahl (allotropia) 2021-06-15 11:26:05 UTC
probably for Writer it's painted in lcl_DrawLineForWrongListData() in sw/source/core/txtnode/fntcache.cxx
which calls several different OutputDevice functions e.g. DrawWaveLine()
Comment 14 Heiko Tietze 2021-11-11 10:42:16 UTC
Created attachment 176189 [details]
Screenshot

Making the lines always more obtrusive might be wrong. Consider a document with different language or a lot of technical terms. To find the two characters the supposed method is running the dialog interaction.

But we do have an accessibility issue. In particular on zoom, what probably people with low sight do, the lines are in fact a bit too faint. So what my patch at https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/125038 does is to take the zoom factor into account and increase the line size and wavyness. Drawback is that it becomes cut-off on huge zoom levels.

Opinions are welcome.
Comment 15 Commit Notification 2021-11-12 13:48:17 UTC
Heiko Tietze committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/4141c13da8245b5ed46be3b7034d014d75f433f9

Resolves tdf#70519 - Make wavy lines depend on zoom factor

It will be available in 7.3.0.

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 16 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2022-01-27 00:52:46 UTC
Verified fixed in:

Version: 7.3.0.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f1c9017ac60ecca268da7b1cf147b10e244b9b21
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 17 Heiko Tietze 2023-06-07 12:05:08 UTC
*** Bug 103337 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-06-07 13:25:28 UTC
*** Bug 155332 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***