[libreoffice-design] Re: Proposed design meeting discussion: Extrinsic vs intrinsic paragraph direction

Hello Regina,

I'll first say, that if I had more time to spare - I might have actually 
taken you up on that offer. It would not be a bad idea to have that kind 
of a manual - for users, and perhaps also for developers (which would 
require the involvement of Jonathan and maybe Khaled Hosni). Even though 
users mostly don't read manuals (and should generally not have to) - 
they do have their place. Unfortunately, the demands on my time are 
rather formidable... I am swamped with work and with anti-genocide 
activities - which are what I should really be focusing my attention on 
TBH. Even my personal FOSS projects, where I am the sole maintainers, 
are suffering right now. So, I'm afraid I have to decline for the time 
being. If someone else were to get started, I could offer an occasional 
leaf-through.

Whether a manual brings out more missing functionality.... well, I don't 
know. Maybe. What I can say is that we know for certain that LibreOffice 
_is_ missing a lot; we have the confirmed bugs to prove it :-P

As for the ODF - it is is missing _some_...  in my opinion, there is at 
least:

* Language as content rather than an aspect of style.
* De-trichotomization, which we should write up and start a process on, 
following the LOCon talk.
* support for setting the direction property to "auto"/"autodetect" 
rather than "rtl", "ltr" or "inherit".

and that itself is already a lot.

Eyal



On 30/09/2025 20:59, Regina Henschel wrote:
> Hi Eyal,
>
> It might be useful to create a special manual for RTL users. I would be 
> willing to collaborate on such a project. Once such a manual has been 
> created, it would become clear whether anything is actually missing and 
> where the user interface needs to be improved. I suspect that no 
> fundamental changes are necessary, either to the ODF format or to its 
> implementation in LibreOffice.
>
> Kind regards,
> Regina
>
> Eyal Rozenberg schrieb am 30.09.2025 um 00:53:
> > I propose we devote a time slot during one of our upcoming design 
> > meetings (but not during the next two weeks, so we would have some 
> > heads-up for more people to join perhaps) to discuss the issue of 
> > direction as an intrinsic/intentional vs an extrinsic/extensional 
> > property of paragraphs or of text more generally.
> >
> > This issue has come up recently in:
> >
> > Bug 168537: DF RTL followed by "Clear DF" retains RTLness, aligns left
> > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168537
> >
> > and has brought up the matter from:
> >
> > Bug 40496: "Clear Direct Formatting" clears RTL directionality
> > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40496
> >
> > with additional discussion found on
> >
> > Bug 58070: Switching paragraph styles removes explicit text direction 
> > choice
> > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58070
> >
> > Briefly:
> >
> > One can often deduce the intended horizontal writing direction (i.e. 
> > LTR vs RTL; I'm ignoring vertical text progression here) of a piece of 
> > text from the content itself, without any formatting indication. And 
> > that happens in many contexts, including text editors and viewers, UI 
> > text edit controls, email clients etc.
> >
> > However - the direction is often not possible to determine 
> > "correctly", as the text may be acceptable as either LTR or RTL, often 
> > depending on wider context. Also, the "technical status quo" in ODF as 
> > a standard and LibreOffice as an app is, that direction is an aspect 
> > of text formatting, set explicitly (or inherited) and separately from 
> > the content.
> >
> > The discussion might map out some of the clashes of these two facts, 
> > and consider what the right approach to settle or address them should 
> > be. As we're talking about a design meeting, this will not focus on 
> > ODF, but potential changes to it might stem from UI/UX suggestions. 
> > See, for example,
> >
> > Bug 162120 - Auto-detect paragraph directions when they were not set 
> > explicitly
> > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162120
> >
> > and my comment #13 there in particular.
> >
> > So, what say you?
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> >
> > PS - Let me clarify that this is _not_ the subject of making text 
> > language be an aspect of content rather than formatting. The two 
> > subjects are separate, and while they have some similarities, they are 
> > also quite different.


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