Re: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] Should formatting apply to word at cursor position or only characters typed after formatting was invoked

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Daniel Mania <daniel.mania@umb.no> wrote:

> Hei everyone!
>
> A while ago I filed a bug report and I had to realize that I am looking at
> a design choice here.
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/**show_bug.cgi?id=46517<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46517>
>
> Basically, when the cursor resides in a word (after first or in front of
> the last character of the word), all formats apply to the whole word. I
> never realized this, until I started using subscript and superscript a lot
> in my writing (for chemical names like CO2).
>
> Is it feasible to change this behavior to formats only being applied to
> newly typed characters?
> It seems strange to me, that the whole word is affected, since it is
> something from the past, in contrast to typing new characters in the future
> after invoking formatting (like super-/subscript).
> If a whole word has to be formatted, it can easily be marked by double
> clicking it. This also makes more sense to me, since I thereby actively
> tell LibreOffice, that I want the whole word to be affected.
> For clarification, I am arguing for the logic behind the formatting
> behavior, not for a reduction in mouse clicks to perform a certain task.

We've discused this on today's design IRC meeting, and we agreed that, when
within a word, subscript and superscript should not apply to the whole
word, but other formatting commands should, as it's usual for a user to
want to italicize or underline a whole word, but uncommon for a whole word
to be a subscript or a superscript.

Could a developer make an exception for subscript and superscript so that
it doesn't apply to the whole word when the cursor is inside it, please?