Re: [libreoffice-design] Questions about "style" name

2011/4/26 Christoph Noack <christoph@dogmatux.com>:
> Hi,
>
> please allow me to quickly add my thoughts ...
>
> Am Montag, den 25.04.2011, 13:18 +0200 schrieb RGB ES:
> > 2011/4/25 Michel RENON <michel.renon@free.fr>:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Few days ago, there was a discussion about the "style" name :
> > > http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/msg01436.html
> > >
> > > As I've been teaching the basic of OpenOffice 2 or 3 years ago, I can
> > > confirm that the idea of "style sheet" is not obvious. But it seems to me
> > > that the name "style sheet" doesn't help...
> > >
> > > I have a suggestion :
> > > what if we completely replace the name "style" (used for style sheet) with
> > > "template" ?
>
> [...]
>
> > > What do you think ?
> > > Might it help some users ?
>
> [...]
>
> > I'm not so sure... I agree that the concept is not simple (I also have
> > experience teaching the use of Writer), but I don't think that a new
> > wording could make things easier.
>
> I second this thought ... the name itself is less an issue. The concept
> of styles is an issue in several languages (and those guys usually tweak
> the naming), therefore renaming in English might have limited effect
> only. It might also lead to the contrary - since many Microsoft Office
> users are aware of the term "Style".
>
> In my point-of-view, it is an issue that people can hardly experience
> the functionality - even by trial and error. And since its hard to use,
> we even hide the Stylist per default ... so even less people stumble
> over the fact that the Stylist is a powerful tool.
>
> <fun>By the way, will we rename the Stylist to Templatist?</fun>
>
>
> We discussed this issue many times at OOo, and I came to the following
> (personal) conclusion; we need ...
>      * a more sensible selection of styles (e.g. attach the list styles
>        to the paragraph styles intended for list use)
>      * an improved Stylist that makes less use of double-clicks and and
>        context menus (a bit different to what Rafael proposed) -->
>        single click confirmation
>      * a real preview of each Style in the Stylist
>      * a real preview for the Styles drop-down in the toolbar
>      * a better connection between the Style drop-down, the Stylist
>        on/off icon to make the idea of styles more clear
>      * a more intelligent ordering of styles (not too smart, but smart
>        enough to present the styles used in the document along with not
>        used ones)

1000 ‰ agreement

> Of course, there are other ways of improving the use of Styles ... but
> this needs a whiteboard :-)
>
>
> Ricardo, Michel, all - what do you think? Something we might work out
> for EasyHacks?

Well, we still have our great Navigator redesign... :lol:
But seriously, yes, we need to make styles more friendly.
And we need to also consider character styles: they are even more
difficult to explain, specially because there is no indicator on the
user interface to show if there is any applied on the text. I think we
need a style selector/status bar: something like this:
https://sites.google.com/site/rgbmldcwriterideas/style-selector-status.png
Cheers
Ricardo

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