Bug 83076 - TOOLBAR: Adding of Line Spacing group button to formatting toolbar
Summary: TOOLBAR: Adding of Line Spacing group button to formatting toolbar
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.4.0.0.alpha0+ Master
Hardware: Other All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Jan Holesovsky
URL:
Whiteboard: target:4.5.0 target:4.4.0.0.beta2
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Writer-Toolbars Split-Group-Buttons-Line-Spacing
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Reported: 2014-08-26 00:36 UTC by Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired)
Modified: 2023-07-17 15:41 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
line spacing drop downs from various apps (40.39 KB, image/png)
2014-10-23 02:27 UTC, Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired)
Details
how the drop down looked before and after (63.97 KB, image/png)
2014-11-06 04:31 UTC, Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired)
Details

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Description Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-08-26 00:36:35 UTC
With 47% of the usage of formatting options in the context menu being used by line spacing options (.uno:SpacePara1, .uno:SpacePara15, .uno:SpacePara2) and accumulatively these options are more used in the context menu then opening the Page style dialog, it is important to give easy access to these options from the toolbar, as ~22% of users were accessing these options from the context menu and these options are being removed in bug 81132.

As proposed in bug 81475 comment 3, a line spacing group button can be created for the toolbar and contain line spacing options of 1, 1.15, 1.5, 2.0. The last entry in the group button will be a 'more' button that will open the Paragraph dialog on the 'Indents & Spacing' tab, and possibly selecting the line spacing drop down.

The group button can be created similar to the insert button found in the tools toolbar (.uno:InsertCtrl) or as a text based drop down similar to the Open and Paste buttons.

And who would have believed that while i was writing this bug, someone on twitter asks 'How do I double space on libreoffice writer?' < https://twitter.com/princessmeww/status/504008837209153536 >. :D
Comment 1 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-10-22 21:01:32 UTC
Setting this to NEW as Kendy is working on this.

In addition to the 1.0, 1.15, 1.5, and 2.0, which are present in the sidebar, it is useful to also have 2.5 and 3.0, as these presents in MS Word (2003 & 2007) and WPS Writer.
Comment 2 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-10-23 02:27:50 UTC
Created attachment 108268 [details]
line spacing drop downs from various apps

The attached image has line spacing drop downs from word 2003, word 2007, wps writer, google docs and iwork pages.

iWork Pages has 2 additional line spacing entries for 1.2 and 1.3, but its the only app to provides these entries, so its not that crucial to have, especially when LibO cant import iWork documents.

Word 2007 and Google Docs also include entries to change the spacing above and below a paragraph as well, which is quite interesting and worth adding if its possible. I think having entries for 'Add space before paragraph' and 'Remove space before paragraph' are likely better than whats available in Word and Docs.
Comment 3 Jan Holesovsky 2014-11-04 22:11:29 UTC
This is implemented now:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?qt=range&q=c7ba28eaa766f2c1d4f0d3b25b40dd40777bc66b..695d29e17feefb33ff54e7263ba2d322e665d176

Adding new pre-defined spacings is trivial; though not sure how much the triple spacing is useful :-)

Please check with the nightly build.
Comment 5 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-04 22:55:09 UTC
Hi Kendy,

Can we eliminate the custom value section, as toolbar drop down are supposed to have 'more options' at the bottom of them for more details, and replace it with 'Spacing 2.5' and 'Spacing 3.0'.
Comment 6 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-04 22:58:11 UTC
Can we also eliminate the image next to each label, as they dont go with the icon theme.
Comment 7 Maxim Monastirsky 2014-11-05 08:13:33 UTC
Hi Kendy,

Thank you for working on this. These buttons look far nicer than the ValueSet. Sorry for nitpicking, but it seems that you need to swap the classes names. ParaLineSpacingPopup is actually the control, and ParaLineSpacingControl is the popup.
Comment 8 Maxim Monastirsky 2014-11-05 08:30:09 UTC
(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #5)
> Can we eliminate the custom value section, as toolbar drop down are supposed
> to have 'more options'
The point is that there is no more options for line spacing - only one custom value, so having to open a dialog just for changing one value could be an overkill.

(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #6)
> Can we also eliminate the image next to each label, as they dont go with the
> icon theme.
So why not make it to go with the theme instead? Actually the reason they don't go with the icon theme right now, is that most of the themes are simply missing those images (they are from svx/res/symphony/ directory). We also can change the .ui file to use the ones from cmd/ that we used for the old buttons.
Comment 9 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-05 09:33:15 UTC
(In reply to Maxim Monastirsky from comment #8)
> (In reply to Jay Philips from comment #5)
> > Can we eliminate the custom value section, as toolbar drop down are supposed
> > to have 'more options'
> The point is that there is no more options for line spacing - only one
> custom value, so having to open a dialog just for changing one value could
> be an overkill.

If you look at most drop downs (styles, table, fields, color picker, bullets, numbering, page size, columns), they provide the basic features that most people use and they have a more option at the bottom for those wanting more customization. Most users change their line spacing to commonly used values, so there isnt a need to clutter up the drop down with customization options.

You can also see in attachment 108268 [details] that MS Word and Google Docs provide options to also add spacing above and below a paragraph from the drop down, which i was intending to also suggest being added, as these are found in the sidebar.

> (In reply to Jay Philips from comment #6)
> > Can we also eliminate the image next to each label, as they dont go with the
> > icon theme.
> So why not make it to go with the theme instead? Actually the reason they
> don't go with the icon theme right now, is that most of the themes are
> simply missing those images (they are from svx/res/symphony/ directory). We
> also can change the .ui file to use the ones from cmd/ that we used for the
> old buttons.

I checked all the themes and they have line spacing icons for 1, 1.5 and 2, but none have for 1.15 primarily because there is no uno command for it and you dont even have 1.15 as a setable option in the paragraph dialog.
Comment 10 Maxim Monastirsky 2014-11-05 10:11:11 UTC
(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #9)
> If you look at most drop downs (styles, table, fields, color picker,
> bullets, numbering, page size, columns), they provide the basic features
> that most people use and they have a more option at the bottom for those
> wanting more customization.
And they all have lots of additional options and customizations. In our case it's the same one attribute.

> You can also see in attachment 108268 [details] that MS Word and Google Docs
> provide options to also add spacing above and below a paragraph from the
> drop down, which i was intending to also suggest being added, as these are
> found in the sidebar.
Actually I'm not sure how is paragraph spacing is related to *line* spacing popup. Just keep in mind that this new popup is used in the sidebar too, so by adding paragraph spacing items to it, it will create a duplication for the sidebar, which already has buttons for it.

Anyway before doing any change I would suggest to make a poll, because this is how the popup looks since 4.1, and maybe there are people that were using it. Or - leave this popup solely to the sidebar as it was before, and introduce a new menu-based popup for the toolbar like the other apps in attachment 108268 [details].
Comment 11 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-06 04:31:16 UTC
Created attachment 109007 [details]
how the drop down looked before and after

I felt something was missing when i got a chance now to try out the drop down and the missing piece is that in the old drop down, the current line spacing is highlighted in blue, which allows you to see what is currently selected if it is one of the 4 clickable buttons.

Also noticed that kendy added accelerators to the buttons, but none of them worked in my testing.

I think the size can be refined a bit to add more spacing vertically between elements (primarily between 'custom value' and 'line spacing:') and also have similar spacing on the right of the line spacing field as there is on the left of the field.

It would also be nice to have a separator line between the top buttons and the customize part.
Comment 12 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-06 04:39:04 UTC
Was trying to add the new line spacing drop down to my current toolbar, but couldnt find it listed in the add commands dialog. Which category is it listed under?
Comment 13 Maxim Monastirsky 2014-11-06 08:53:31 UTC
(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #12)
> Was trying to add the new line spacing drop down to my current toolbar, but
> couldnt find it listed in the add commands dialog. Which category is it
> listed under?
Fixed in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=c838ce2f2fd7bfe168f610f5a6de426ba48aa68d. You can now find it under "Format".
Comment 14 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2014-11-06 22:55:08 UTC
(In reply to Maxim Monastirsky from comment #10)
> And they all have lots of additional options and customizations. In our case
> it's the same one attribute.

I take back all my previous suggests to reduce the options in the menu, as the most ideal thing is not to send people into the dialog, especially when they can easily modify the single feature in the drop down.

> Actually I'm not sure how is paragraph spacing is related to *line* spacing
> popup. Just keep in mind that this new popup is used in the sidebar too, so
> by adding paragraph spacing items to it, it will create a duplication for
> the sidebar, which already has buttons for it.

Well they are not directly related, but it was a way to make it easy to modify the above and below paragraph spacing, without adding dedicated buttons for this in the toolbar.

> Anyway before doing any change I would suggest to make a poll, because this
> is how the popup looks since 4.1, and maybe there are people that were using
> it. Or - leave this popup solely to the sidebar as it was before, and
> introduce a new menu-based popup for the toolbar like the other apps in
> attachment 108268 [details].

I believe its fine as it is and just needs some slight improvements, which i've mentioned in comment 11. Is it possible to also offer the 'Last Custom Value' which was previously there in the old drop down?
Comment 15 Commit Notification 2014-11-28 08:08:13 UTC
Jan Holesovsky committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=8a34ea45fc962ff5b583228730a088f6e264bfb4

fdo#83076: More space around the 'Custom Value'.

It will be available in 4.5.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 16 Commit Notification 2014-11-28 08:08:17 UTC
Jan Holesovsky committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-4-4":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=37d77ef6d24f24a8c1a643baaaf0589869414568&h=libreoffice-4-4

fdo#83076: More space around the 'Custom Value'.

It will be available in 4.4.0.0.beta2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 17 Mike §chinagl 2014-12-20 21:47:17 UTC
This bug fix comes with LibreOffice 4.4 (release notes https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.4) 


The paragraph line spacing dropdown that was present only in the sidebar has been reworked so that it can be used in the main toolbar too, and was added there.

See a graphic of the work:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Paragraph-line-spacing.png