Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
September 2011 Archives by date, by thread · List index


Hi Astron!

Only short, because I'm already gone since half an hour ;-)

Am Mittwoch, den 07.09.2011, 21:54 +0200 schrieb Astron:
Hi.

An important exception is the page style. You cannot build hierarchies of
page styles. But for page styles the properties are not copied to the new
page style, so that you have to start from scratch. So there is a deficiency
in page styles: you have neither linking nor copying.

Why does this software have to be so inconsistent all the time?

That has several (sometimes historical) reasons, e.g.:
      * StarOffice 3.0 had a more complete "object-oriented" approach
        which drove users nuts. So some features have been removed
        during the OOo times (I still miss overloading of character
        styles, sigh).
      * ODF might not provide the required functionality (should be
        checked).
      * Compatibility requires to have this or that capability
        (especially in Impress, styles behave weird because of
        PowerPoint compatibility).
      * ...

I guess, that adding "Copy" to the page styles will be easier than adding a
linking feature. But I have not examined the code.

Could it be a good idea to just copy Scribus's behaviour [1]? It gives
you buttons for
[New]     [Clone]
[Import]  [Delete]
where "New" always creates a new empty style (that is, a copy of the
default style) and "Clone" creates a copy of the currently selected
style (btw, I like "Duplicate", as initially proposed by Olivier, much
better as a name for the button). Inheritances can then be defined
later on.

Need to think a bit about that...

Ultimately, I don't think inheritances are very intuitive [2] and
there is probably not a very good way to present them to the user, so
we might as well try to keep them out of the hands of at least
inexperienced users.

Well, I'm sure inheritances can be communicated to the user ... but that
will need some deeper thinking. Currently, the representation via
hierarchy view or the styles "management" tab is a bit lame.

Regards,

Astron.

A pleasure to discuss stuff with you :-)

Cheers,
Christoph


[1] By that, I don't mean everything should be copied, only the
behaviour of the two buttons.
[2] They are powerful, though.



Context


Privacy Policy | Impressum (Legal Info) | Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy.