Re: [libreoffice-design] The Gallery and shapes, following the UX/design meeting 2023-Nov-30

Hi Eyal,

Eyal Rozenberg schrieb am 01.12.2023 um 22:35:

> 'curved-left-arrow', 'curved-right-arrow' etc.
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> These four items in the Arrows category are all the exact same shape,
> but rotated in 4 directions and each with different coloring.

No, their geometries are different and they produce different markup in 
the file. You need to look at the middle part to see, that they are 
different.
And you cannot get one from the other by 90° rotation, because a 
rotation affects a text in the shape.

 We see
> this phenomenon a lot across the gallery: Artificially inflating the
> number of shapes with faux variety, which serves to obscures what the
> gallery actually offers.

Many shapes in the Gallery are shapes corresponding to predefined 
OOXML-shapes.

If we provided all predefined OOXML shapes, we would get a Gallery-theme 
with 189 shapes.

> This shape is a sort of a  "flattened-3D-stripe" kind of arrow, making a
> U-turn or 180-degree turn. There's a non-3D shape making a U-turn (item
> 3 in the arrow category) - with more flexible controls than the
> 3D-stripe shapes, i.e. you give up flexibility for a 3D-effect. This
> feels like a weird choice to need to make.

> What's entirely missing, though, are shapes other than a U-turn arrow
> with a similar 3D effect. Even, say, a 90-degree circular-arc stripe
> rather 180 degrees, or a more straight-angle turn. Or more decorative
> gallery items which complement the use of this effect.

The user needs are very different: garden planning objects or furniture 
or electronic components or mathematical illustrations or traffic signs 
or UML diagrams or outlines of countries... And think of all the 
thousands of cliparts.

All such needs are better served by extensions than by bundled Gallery 
themes.

> More importantly, though, is the fact that these shapes are not
> finalized media one puts into a gallery for display: They are
> building-blocks for drawing diagrams. In a media gallery, I would not
> expect to even have control points. So, if you look at the 'oval-arrow'
> shape, or the shape named 'top-arrows' - they have no control points; it
> might be a lot of fun if we could pull and tug and scale different
> aspects of it, but - we can't; it's a finalized, albeit vectorized,
> piece of clipart. We can take it apart and play with its sub-components,
> but it's not in itself intended as a flexible component.

Yes, the Gallery has very different kind of objects. We could discuss 
whether shapes should be grouped by their technical aspect or grouped by 
a topic.

> 'right-arrow', 'left-arrow', 'down-arrow', 'up-arrow'
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> This is another example of four shapes, which are really just one shape
> with fake variety.

Here to, you need to consider text in the shape.

 For simple arrows, the gallery offers a one-sided and
> a two-sided arrow, and that's it. But this quadruplet of duplicates is
> an important example for another reason: It's a shape that's already
> part of "Basic Shapes", in the "Block Arrows" category. So, all four
> shapes are just duplicates of another shape, which we already have
> available in a more accessible way.

Shapes in the "Basic Shapes" category and the other categories are in 
most cases designed to be compatible with binary MS Office formats (e.g. 
ppt). We try to convert them to OOXML shapes on export to pptx. But that 
does not work in all cases. The ooxml-shapes from the Gallery can be 
better used for exchange with pptx, but they fail for export to ppt.

> ... except that the situation is actually worse than that. If you'll
> compare the gallery block-arrow and the "Block Arrows" block-arrow from
> the toolbar, you'll notice that the latter has a single control point,
> for the arrow shaft width; but the former has both that control point,
> and the one for arrowhead length.

see above.

> So not only do we have internal redundancy within the gallery; and not
> only is there redundancy between the gallery and the Basic Shapes; but
> "Basic Shapes" has been neglected in this respect, with a better version
> of a shape having been placed in the gallery instead of where it belongs.

I think mixing binary-based shapes and OOXML-based shapes is a bad idea 
because of the export problems mentioned above.

> Shapes: 'textbox', 'header', 'title'
> ----------------------------------------------
> These shapes are just textboxes, each with a string of text, and at a
> different font size. Supposedly, they stand for plain textbox, textbox
> that corresponds to your presentation's header text font, and textbox
> that corresponds to your presentation title font. In actuality, they're
> nothing of the kind: It's just Liberation Sans in three specific sizes.
> If you change the presentation styles or use a template - these shapes
> won't adapt; and their names will just be misleading.
>
> This is another example of a set of shapes which have artificial
> variation; but they are also three shapes that will never be used,
> except perhaps by mistake; and of shapes which, I argue, no user would
> consider placing in their clipart or media gallery, because of their
> complete triviality. It is as though the Gallery populators decided to
> pack some shapes for us, in case we got stranded on a deserted island
> where the toolbars and menus don't work, and we can only use the gallery
> to insert anything.... these three are at the same time silly and
> garish. It also doesn't help that their preview shows nothing but text
> on a white background, i.e. it's not even clear that they're textboxes
> unless you read their names.

They are not text boxes but custom shapes of type "ooxml-rect".

> --
>
> These are not the only examples of these issues - there's more where
> that came from. The gallery is very much a neglected feature: Its UI
> behavior and its contents. This, in contrast to the Basic Shapes -
> toolbar panel-buttons and a sidebar deck. Those have very informative
> icons; there is no redundancy; and the shapes are stripped of extra
> styling, like color variations etc. _That_ mechanism is in wide use (I
> strongly believe; I have no statistics about any of this).

However, you could also use the variations in the Gallery as inspiration 
for your own designs.

> I have a strong suspicion that it is rarely used in practice. But there
> is some small use in having the Gallery as it is today: A rhetorical
> device against improving Basic Shapes... "If you want that shape, just
> put it in the Gallery".

I have a technical, systematic view and would prefer to have one 
dedicated theme in the Gallery with _all_ OOXML-shapes. But that is my 
very personal view.

It would be indeed interesting to know more about the use of the 
Gallery. There could be very frequently used objects. But on the other 
hand there might be objects which are only used by few users, but they 
do not want to do without these object.

Kind regards,
Regina





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