Hi there, several partial answers to points from various people. Disclaimer: I'm the original author of this feature, so at least I can tell you the reasons for why the feature behaves as-is today. ;) Muthu Subramanian wrote:
Currently the text font size box in the toolbar displays the originally set font size even when the font size is reduced because of 'Auto fit' One of our users requested the behavior where the text font size is changed when the autofit size changes the text size.
For me the most important reason for the _status quo_ is the fact that indeed the text stays formatted with the font size as stated in the drop-down. When you resize the text box, the text grows larger - but *only* up until the font size as you see it in the UI. When you copy & paste the text, again it will bear the font size as shown in the drop-down. So it is at least useful information (bear with me a little bit, on whether it is necessary information as well). Muthu Subramanian wrote:
Just to brainstorm a little more: How would it be if autofit was an option rather than a property? E.g. Users click on autofit - it fits the text accordingly, but when users add more text or remove text it just behalves normally?
Of course, autofit can also be implemented on-request, i.e. a text overflows the box, user clicks "auto-fit", Impress calculates necessary font size shrink & applies hard formatting. That is a bit lacking, at least for power users, since: * reading the document on another machine that does not have the font used might end up with wrapped lines or overflow again * the text now bears hard formatting, and will no longer adapt to style changes in general, and applying different master pages in particular. this currently works very nicely, when in crunch mode in front of a presentation, having to apply the new Corporate slide template - if your text has auto-fit on, you get nicely fitting content (albeit at potentially different sizes) * we'd at least have to internally be able to round-trip that stuff for PowerPoint, i.e. the code for treating this as a property will have to stay, anyway. Jean-Baptiste Faure wrote:
I think this autofit feature is very disturbing if you are not aware of it.
Granted - so how to best display that? PowerPoint has a little icon next to the textboxes that have this enabled.
From my point of view it should be removed because if what you are writing does not fit in the available room, you should write less words or add room (split the text on another slide), but not write smaller when what you are writing is intended to be viewed on a projection screen.
I'm afraid but trying to educate users by taking away options might end you up simply being replaced by another, more feature-full offering these days .... Before getting deeper into the rather broad question of which features are useful or not, for this thread, I think it would be most helpful to improve the existing feature towards better usability. :) Cheers, -- Thorsten
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