Currently Writer has under line and strike through, and when text is selected Impress, Calc, and draw has only under line in their tool bars. This is very inconsistent. Underline should be replaced with a drop down button like the the bullets or number list. So initially the button would be under line button with drop down arrow next to it. In the drop down menu would be Strike through, double underline, Over Line and anything else that I may have missed.
enhancement request. status NEW. I add Jay to CC list since he's the GUI expert.
Hi Andrew, Yes there are plans of turning the underline button in the toolbar into a split button which has double underline, overline, etc. but wouldnt contain strike through. You can see a similar split button in the sidebar properties tab.
Created attachment 116539 [details] Line Menu
Wow that is very nice. I did not know that this options was in the side bar as I don't look through it very much.. I don't see why it is even their... This looks much better than what I was thinking of as you have different style lines that you can choose from. To make this even better however I think that strike through and over line should be added to this. This would be great as it brings out more features that are initially hidden to the user. Clears some clutter from the formatting toolbar as you don't need all three of these buttons on the bar when they could be put into a split button. Attached is a my vision of what the line menu should look like. Now you not only have control of what the under line style is but you can also change the strike through and over line.
Strike through is a heavily used command in writer, while it isnt as heavily used in other apps, so though it maybe included in the split button for the benefit of other apps, strike through would remain in the toolbar in writer for easy access.
Why do this to LibreOffice again? Adding the strike through to the writer format bar and not the split button add unneeded cluter to this bar and adds more inconsistency to LibreOffice. I could write bug reports for days about how inconsistent the veryous LibreOffice apps are. I understand that somethings must be different as they different apps that do different things. But there are some things that looks as though they were created by two completely different devs and they did not bother to look at whether this feature has been implemented in the other apps. This has to take a hit on technical debt with duplicate code. As I have seen the same feature implemented differently in all 6 of the apps. Besides taking strike through out of this menu takes away the possibility of adding different styles to the line. Unless you add a split button for each of the underline, strike through, and over line. But why do this? This is duplicate code that could be merged into one function. All for what, because it is a heavily used feature in one of the apps? If never used the strike through feature. But if other people do use it as hevaly as you say then they can switch underline for strike through. And then their LibreOffice would have Bold, italic and strike through were as mine would still be bold, italic and underline.
(In reply to Andrew from comment #6) > Why do this to LibreOffice again? Adding the strike through to the writer > format bar and not the split button add unneeded cluter to this bar and adds > more inconsistency to LibreOffice. I could write bug reports for days about > how inconsistent the veryous LibreOffice apps are. I understand that > somethings must be different as they different apps that do different > things. But there are some things that looks as though they were created by > two completely different devs and they did not bother to look at whether > this feature has been implemented in the other apps. This has to take a hit > on technical debt with duplicate code. As I have seen the same feature > implemented differently in all 6 of the apps. The addition of buttons to the toolbar is a simple process (adding a line to an xml file), while the addition of a split button is a more difficult process (requires development work to achieve). I have been the one working on the toolbars in 4.4 and 5.0 and have been trying to unify them across apps. > Besides taking strike through out of this menu takes away the possibility of > adding different styles to the line. Unless you add a split button for each > of the underline, strike through, and over line. But why do this? This is > duplicate code that could be merged into one function. All for what, > because it is a heavily used feature in one of the apps? If never used the > strike through feature. But if other people do use it as hevaly as you say > then they can switch underline for strike through. And then their > LibreOffice would have Bold, italic and strike through were as mine would > still be bold, italic and underline. A user has the ability to customize their toolbars to their needs, so if you dont care for the strike through, you can easily hide it, but presently there isnt any toolbar code available for a underline split button, so that is why it hasnt been added and this bug report will be used to hopefully achieve it, once a developer decides to take on this task.
I am not talking about the ability to customize the tool bar. I should have explained better. I think that when a use fist started up they should see the bold, italic and new underline split button. When the user clicks to revile the split buttons menu they would see what I attached. If thy were to select the strike through they would no longer see the underline split button but see that underline has been automatically replaced with strike through. Now when they click the button it will strike through what is selected and not underline. If they were to select the over line button the underline would be replaced with the over line.
So you want the underline split button to change based on the last selected option, similar to how the font color icon changes so that you can reuse the same color again. I dont think that would be a good option to implement for this split button as underline is the most popular of these line options and it would cause users who want to set for example strike through one, to then have to open up the drop down to reselect underline the next time they need it.
So the user has to change it back. This only a slite annoyance. Underline is the most popular function between these three, strike through being the second, and over line probably never gets used because almost no one knows its an option. Those who use underline will always have underline as an option available to them. And those who need to use strike through can select it from the new menu. It should change so that this user can add a strike through other things with ease. The next time the user needs to underline something they will ether CRTL+U or look for the spot in the tool bar that has bold, italic, and oh wait its strike through right now, oh yah I just used strike through, let me change that back. This is not a big deal the same thing happens every time a use wants to change the font color or hilight color. They see that the color they need is not the color selected so they go to the split drop down and choose the color they need. This is also the same way billets and number lists work. There is no difference between the use cases of all these split buttons.
IMHO an Underline dropdown, if anything, should show underline related options (similar to what we have in the sidebar right now, and what MS Word has). The ability to easily choose a dropdown line style, without going through the dialog, could be very useful feature. In general I don't like the idea of a dropdown with commands that are not a variation of the main button. Dropdown items should either belong to the same toggle group as the main button, so that they can replace each other (like text alignment, or shapes), or there should be no main button (which is not an option for underline as it's much used). Other then that it's too confusing, and also highly undiscoverable for a new user, that would never ever think of looking for strike through under "Underline", unless he already knows it's there. Also, if there is no enough room for strike through on the toolbar, it could be a hidden button by default. That's exactly the purpose of hidden buttons, to have there much useful buttons, when there is no enough room for them by default, so that a user could easily add them, without wasting time with the toolbar customization dialog. Rarely used buttons, shouldn't be in the toolbar anyway, even as hidden buttons.
> The ability to easily choose a dropdown line style, without going > through the dialog, could be very useful feature. yes it would be a very useful feature... to also have with strike through and over line. > In general I don't like the idea of a dropdown with commands that are not a > variation of the main button. Dropdown items should either belong to the > same toggle group as the main button, so that they can replace each other > (like text alignment, or shapes), why is so hard to think of this not as just the underline button but the line button. under, through, over. These really are not that different just their position related to characters. Would you have a strike through and over line split button? because they could have line styles too. if they could use the same split button why can't they be in the same split button? > or there should be no main button (which is not an option for underline as > it's much used). Other then that it's too confusing, and also highly > undiscoverable for a new user, that would never ever think of looking for > strike through under "Underline", unless he already knows it's there. > Also, if there is no enough room for strike through on the toolbar, it could > be a hidden button by default. That's exactly the purpose of hidden buttons, > to have there much useful buttons, when there is no enough room for them by > default, so that a user could easily add them, without wasting time with the > toolbar customization dialog. Rarely used buttons, shouldn't be in the > toolbar anyway, even as hidden buttons. So because these buttons are rarely used they should be hidden, actually they should not even be hidden buttons. yet putting them in the split buttons drop down makes it hard for people discover them... tell me how are people going to discover a hidden button/button not in the toolbar at all? It took me a long time to discover that you could customize the tool bars and I am an advanced user. But even the newest user to office tools will eventually decide to look at whats in the split button just like they will when they choose more colors. again IMHO I don't think it is a big deal at all to place these three buttons in the same split button. as they do relatively the same thing. Put a line somewhere around text.
Migrating Whiteboard tags to Keywords: (needsDevEval, topicUI) [NinjaEdit]
Please add keyword 'needsUXEval' and CC 'libreoffice-ux-advise@lists.freedesktop.org' if input from UX is needed.
UX, please advise if this should be closed. We have a split button for underline, a strikethrough button in the sidebar for all components, and proposal to have a split strikethrough button in bug 153299. IMHO, main inconsistency is underline but no strikethrough in the Calc toolbar, but comments seem to indicate we don't seek consistency here because strikethrough is more useful to Writer. Won't fix?
Rather WFM since we do have uno:Underline with the various options of line styles everywhere (which seems not have been in the past). And the strike-through feature is handled in bug 153299.
Actually think we can call this FIXED https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/24491/ by Szymon Kłos Additional work for bug 153299 would provide Strikethrough. With some UX decision for doing similar for Overline, or not.