[libreoffice-design] Minutes from the UX/design meeting 2025-Aug-12

Present: Eyal, Daniel, John, Heiko
Comments: Verhoeckx, Stuart, Khaled, Hartmut, Bogdan, Jan

Tickets/Topics

 * Better support of two-page working (face2face, book view):
   Pgup/dn for two-page thumb through
   + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172951
   + a user choosing 2-up "Book-view" likely does not want to page
     in single page increments (Stuart)
   + make it work for multi-page view (Hartmut)
   + disagree with bending uno:GotoNextPage to something like
    .uno:GotoNextPagesRow; the use case of GotoNextPage is probably
     (Heiko)
   + the request cannot be accomplished with existing uno commands
     because it also shows the DoTo dialog and is available on the
     Navigator (Eyal)
   + request for visual navigation among pages sounds reasonable to me,
     as the request isn't to change the default. (Eyal)
   + PgDown behaves differently depending on the zoom level for Word
     and either goes to the usual position if the end of the page
     is not shown but otherwise to the next page; in multi-page mode
     the same happens and either PgDown stays on the same page or
     continues to the next row; Next Page always continues to the next
     row of pages (Daniel)
     + yet, Word does not place the caret at the "next page"
   + still disagree with this inconsistency (Heiko)
   + We now have two alternatives to consider: Hartmut's actual ask, and
     the MSO behavior. I believe we should implement at least one of them,
     perhaps both, but would like to ask Hartmut for his opinion as
     well. (Eyal)
   + can live with PgDown depending on zoom (Heiko)
   => comment

 * Navigator - Single click to view sheet
   + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172297
   + disagree (Bogdan, Heiko)
   + available actions are unclear anyway (Jan)
   + advocate for the request because MS allows to switch between
     single/double click for the explorer; the benefits of double click
     is clear but does not outweigh convenience/accessibility (Eyal)
   + regarding auto enter while navigating with keyboard (bug 172300),
     this would be a consequence of single click aka select (Heiko)
   + make it available as an option on the Navigator? means to have
     different behavior across modules, would prefer an expert
     option (Heiko)
   + I am not yet convinced to be convinced this is a common enough
     use case to justify the gear-wheel button or similar UI
     change. I am specifically suspicious that a very large number
     of sheets is just the wrong way to use Calc. (Eyal)
   => comment

 * Width adjustment Opening an ODF Text into Web view
   + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172984
   + for editing and reading it makes sense to limit line lenght (Jan, Eyal)
   + rather fix the actual issue; (Heiko)
     + 400 pages or more is where the lag starts to become noticeable
       in healthy documents (OP)
   + Google Docs' webview has a special area to show content (Daniel)
   + Is resizing the window not a sufficient mechanism to control the
     display width? (Eyal, John)
   + would rather drop the whole webview (Heiko, John)
   + regardless of the use case we should introduce an option to limit
     the number of shown characters resp. forced line break (Eyal)
   + should be done as expert option since not many user run into problems
   => comment

 * Replace the default font with Noto Sans
   + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172824
   + GNU FreeSans and DejaVu have a higher coverage of Unicode
     characters, Noto Sans has an active development (Verhoeckx)
   + Noto font superfamily should be added to each of the VCL.xcu
     font sequences as each locale would use (Stuart)
   + Liberation Serif has always been odd-looking; Noto takes almost
     as much size as the whole app (Khaled)
   + Noto fonts are homogeneous in their metrics (Stuart)
   + Last time, we decided the default remains Serif, so the option on
     the table seems to be Noto Serif, not the various Sans fonts; but
     most of the proponents have not actually argued in favor of Noto
     Serif.  (Eyal)
   + Such a proposal should not be considered ready for discussion
     before it regards the default choice, or proposed-choice, of
     typefaces for all scripts, or at least the more popular scripts,
     considers the compatibility, and consults with the relevant
     language communities. And even if one were to propose changing
     just the default type for Latin-alphabet scripts, one still needs
     to consider the compatibility - aesthetic and metric - with the
     other fonts we bundle and suggest for use as the default. (Eyal)
   + don't install the complete Noto Sans family (Verhoeckx)
     + which means we make the switch depending on dynamic
       font management (Heiko)
     + and unclear how to create binaries for the different
       languages
   => postpone this discussion for the time when post-installing
      a font is easy

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