[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Organisation of formatting templates

Hello all,

understanding and organizing paragraph styles and templates (Formatvorlagen in German) is very 
confusing, and complicated to me. 
So here are some suggestions, to make it more easy and fun to work with:

In general sometimes I have the impression that the dialog panels are not structured in a way that 
helps to understand the concepts behind. So let's focus on the paragraph style panel here. This is 
the one we can access when right clicking on a style in the 'styles and templates' panel and 
selecting 'Modify …'. I'll call it the 'Edit styles and formatting' panel here.

Some minor ideas first: 

1) When the template 'Standard' is almost the primary template for the font, why not call it 
something like 'font_basis'. And when 'text body' is almost the primary template for paragraphs, 
why not call it something like 'paragraph_basis'. And when 'heading' is almost the primary template 
for all other headings why not call it something like 'heading_basis'?

2) I would like to find inside the 'styles and formatting' panel an 'Apply', a 'New' button as well 
as an 'Edit' button. This right-click is really annoying, when working with these templates? I 
think a second line with buttons would really help to understand what happens here and how to use 
the panel.

3) Why is the 'load styles' function hidden behind the 'new from selection' button? To me this is 
absolutely not intuitive. A [+] button with a [load] button would be way more intuitive. 

4) What for do I need page styles in this panel? (Why not place this page style selection right on 
top of the page - like a tab) But that's something completely different.

But now to the most important changes:
Styles may be linked to other styles but always just to one at once. So they have a kind of child 
relation to a parent style. But even the parent style might be linked to another style and so on. 
This concept should be shown to the users and not be hidden behind the 'organize' tab in an very 
inconvenient way.

5) When editing a style I'd like to see a list of all the styles that lead to my current style: 
Starting perhaps with 'Standard' at the top, followed by 'text body' below and 'heading' to finally 
show me 'heading 2' which I might want to edit right now. This list should be enhanced by the 
properties and attributes, which are added by this particular style. (The text field called 
'contains' right at the bottom of the 'organize' tab.) This field should be called something like 
'Changes:'

6) The field: 'Linked with' should be called something like 'Derived from' or 'Based on' and could 
be exactly the field that introduces the 'Name' of the field above the current style.

7) Then there is another entry in the list: 'Currently changed in selection:' This holds changes 
that are manually done in the currently selected paragraph.

8) Each entry of this list should have an 'Edit' (or Goto) button to easily access this style 
template from the list view.

So my list would look something like:


Template: Standard      [GoTo] button
Changes : Arial + 11pt
--------------
Template: text body      [GoTo] button
Changes : Indent left 0,0cm, first line -0,76cm, Indent right 0,0cm
--------------
Derived from: [heading] drop down list        [GoTo] button
Changes      : Numbering(Outline) + ….
--------------
Template: heading2        {this might be the template I'm currently working on so no GoTo button, 
but perhaps a 'copy' button and an 'edit' button that opens the panel "Edit Styles and Formatting"}
Changes: Arial Black + 14pt + bold + Background grey + … this text field should be editable, so I 
might want to erase attributes I have added by accident. The 'Edit Styles and Formatting' panel 
shall work as an editor for this - so if I change something there I see the effect immediately here.
--------------
Currently changed in selection:     [apply to style] button
Changes: 15pt + italic                    [erase] button


We see the last 3 entries of this list are a little bit different from the rest of the list. They 
might be not part of the list in a technical point of view, but have an almost static layout in the 
panel instead. Nevertheless they should appear optically as if they where part of the list to show 
consistence in the meaning.


9) This list could be placed on top of the panel "Edit Styles and Formatting" as it is now above 
the tab selection, or on the left side of it and would completely replace the 'Organzier' tab 
within this panel. There would be a nice representation of the functionality if it was like this. 
First we just show the 'Styles and Formatting' panel. When selecting a style and pushing "edit" the 
panel pushes out a panel with this list-panel with the "Edit Styles and Templates" on its right 
side.

10) Another (easier to implement) was of this concept would be to show this list upside down in the 
'Organizer' tab of the 'Edit Styles and Formatting" panel as it is today. For this simply swap the 
order of the fields in this 'Organzier' tab so that they appear in this order: Category, Name, 
Contains, Linked with --> change to 'Based on', Contains (from the linked style), the list: Name, 
Contains, …. and finally Next Style --> change to 'Return changes to style:" This would be perhaps 
a first attempt to implement this concept.


I'd love to provide a sketch of this concept if someone is interested in. Unfortunately I'm not 
able to code it by myself, but I'd love to develop this concept in cooperation with someone who 
knows to do the coding stuff.


Best regards,
Oliver Rafelsberger