Encourage correct use of styles (was: [libreoffice-design] Line Spacing Button)

Hi Graham,

At 03:09 19-1-2012, Graham Lauder wrote:
> On Thursday 19 Jan 2012 00:22:11 Christophe Strobbe wrote:
> > At 03:47 18-1-2012, Andrew Pullins wrote:
> > >Im for the one button being a drop down, iv been wanting this to be one
> > >button for some time. to me the slider/button with a slider drop down
> > >sounds like a bad idea.
> >
> > My main concern is whether new UI widgets are keyboard accessible and
> > screen reader accessible. A slider is a bit more complex for a screen
> > reader user.
> >
> > A more general question raised by all those toolbar buttons: how can
> > we modify the UI to encourage the correct use of styles (as opposed
> > to direct ad-hoc styling)? Does anybody have ideas about that?
> >
>
> Stop people from using MSO first :)
>
> Take styles out of the tool bar or replace it with an indicator ie It shows
> the styles in the present context but clicking on it opens the stylist pane
> rather than allowing styles to be applied from the dropdown.

I find it very important to be able to see what style is in use at 
the current editing location (that is what I hate about the MS Office 
Ribbon: as soon as you leave "Home", you can no longer see what the 
current style is unless you open the Styles panel or the Apply Styles 
panel), but opening the Style pane when you open the Styles drop-down 
list sounds like a bridge too far for me. Keyboard focus would need 
to be handled very carefully for blind users and other keyboard 
users. It is also potentially confusing for magnification users, 
because not all magnifiers follow the focus when a new window, pane, etc opens.



> Have the stylist pane docked by default on the right for left to right text
> flow. Left dock is too intrusive for normal work flow. Symphony does this
> rather well.

Yes, I like this. (In LibreOffice, I typically have the Navigator and 
the Styles and Formatting pane docked above each other on the left).


> Do away with "Default" template and have multiple available templates at
> install. First run then would have a "choose your normal template" dialog
> something like the "Master Pages" dialog in Impress but with an obvious
> "create your own" option. That would show off basic document elements such as
> Title, Heading, sub head, text body, para indents, font faces, list 
> styles and
> page styles and maybe headers and footers.

Sounds good, but many people configure Impress so it doesn't start 
with the wizard; they might do the same with a similar wizard. If you 
only run this wizard on the first run of Writer - as you seem to be 
suggesting - that should be OK. The trick is then to make the concept 
of styles as clear as possible.
(I'll come back to this when I have more time and ideas.)


> Install a large wet rubber glove that jumps out of the screen and slaps them
> when they try to format on the fly.

I would prefer electric shocks through the keyboard - think of 
Stanley Milgram's "obedience to authority" experiment ;-)


> OK trying to code the last one might be a bit of a challenge, but it is
> something that would be an excellent behaviour modification tool. ;)

LOL

Best regards,

Christophe


> Cheers
> GL


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
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