Just localizing updated LO Getting Started Guide for 5.1 and stumbled over the statement that the new Styles menu cannot have custom styles entries. Then I thought about analogy with the "Recent Files" entry in the File menu ... So I propose to add "Recent Styles" entry in the Styles menu (if not as the first choice then at least in the first half of the menu, as it would be handy there). I propose clicking it a drop list of 5 recently used styles opens, including custom styles. The number could be tweaked to The styles on the list could also get default keyboard shortcuts (all five of them) so selecting/applying recent custom styles would be really fast. The functionality seems very like the graphical dropdown list in the toolbar, yet it needs to be present in the Styles menu for users that have eliminated the toolbars and because the Styles menu should contain all relevant commands for styles.
UX Team -- please take a look at this enhancement. Thanks!
I can see the intent but not a fan, primarily because of the complexity of implementing it correctly as dynamic entries on the main menu. Complex because to be useful a "recent styles" list would need to be modal to follow the object type that has focus on the canvas and adjust to list appropriate style to be applied. Yes we already have the "Applied Styles" filter on the Styles and Formatting content panel of the Sidebar. But that already suffers from not following the mode(s) of the selected canvas object -- Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page or List. Kind of see this as requiring a lot of development effort, for minimal returns and potential for major issues in messing with main menu.
Would have to agree with Stuart on the issue of dynamic menu items and it requiring quite a bit of dev work for minimal benefit. You also have the problem of recently used style in on document not being found in another document, so those entries couldnt appear in the list for that document. @Maxim, Samuel: Any thoughts?
Dynamic menu items are easily possible as long as they are kept in a separate submenu. This is by no means different from what we do with File > Recent Documents, Edit > Object or Tools > Macros > Organize. Adding items dynamically to a static menu (i.e. to the Styles menu itself, without additional submenus) isn't possible. The only way to make it happen is to dynamically manage the whole Styles menu - even the static items of it - which means that we won't be able to easily express them in the menubar xml.
(In reply to Maxim Monastirsky from comment #4) > ... This is by no means different from what we do with File > > Recent Documents, Edit > Object or Tools > Macros > Organize. Except the fact that list of recently opened documents does not change with the currently opened document. Or you understand the styles similarly to this feature having a use case in mind with document 1 > style xy followed by document 2 > same style. Guess this was not the intention. I wouldn't add user defined styles to the main menu. "User defined" styles since the default headings, text body etc. are available at the first level with all the properties that users have applied to it. Users can choose the additional style easily at the toolbar or the sidebar. Adding it to the main menu leads only to more confusion. INVALID/WORKSFORME?
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5) > Except the fact that list of recently opened documents does not change with > the currently opened document. There isn't any technical limitation that prevents changing a menu based on the current document. It's just that the recent docs menu doesn't need it.
Thanks Maxim and Heiko for your inputs.