https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959
--- Comment #323 from liotier <[email protected]> --- Also sprach [email protected] [Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 12:49:36PM +0000] : > It would be better to develop the long-term strategy of a superior function. Want long term ? Outliners have a track record that reaches to the beginning of the eighties, back when writing "M$" was not even fashionable yet... See some early history at http://outliners.scripting.com Since then there has been an awful lot of outliner diversity ranging from full-fledged mind mapping applications to a few embedded shortcuts in generalist editors - for an example of the latter, see Writer's ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to the 'Promote/Demote One Level' and 'Move Up/Down with Subpoints' which work well with bullet lists but disappointingly not with title levels... Extending their use to titles would be a nice way to start alleviating the outlining pains in Writer without having to incur the high cost of implementing a new view. > The m$-clone fans assume everyone has access to and is able to use m$word and > simply copy the functionality into lo/oo. Of course - assuming is what users do. Are you new in this industry ? As you helpfully suggest, people whose computing childhood has been fed on Microsoft's tits twenty years ago have expectations shaped a certain way, which makes them dinosaurs in a brave new world of tablet-toting small mammals. At first sight, you might confuse those elderly saurians for the audience of WYSIWYG outlining features - but that would be a mistake caused by the large overlap between those 'desktop biased' users and the writers of large structured documents. What now ? As its long lineage shows, WYSIWYG outlining in desktop software is a mature practice - and indeed it is not where user growth happens nowadays: desktop is a heavy content creator's tool and the numbers are therefore stagnating while consumption and light content creation soars on mobile devices. So there we are with a classic product management dilemma: provide advanced features that make power users happy but that won't help getting new users onboard, or focus the resource on lowering the barriers to access. There is no good answer there - only strategic choices, which in free software belong to the developers. Anyway, since the very idea of emulating Microsoft software give you the creeps (I know the feeling - I only recently actually accepted CIFS as a first-class citizen of my networks), here are a few non-Microsoft examples of outlining practices... A non-WYSIWYG example in the deceptively spartan Vim, The Vim Outliner: http://bike-nomad.com/vim/vimoutliner.html - it does everything a classic outliner does, as its documentation explains: http://bike-nomad.com/vim/README.otl.txt A cross-Apple example - Apple only, but the UI scales across the whole product range from phone to desktop: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner/#Write - autistic software, but functionally very nice. A web-based example: https://www.theoutlinerofgiants.com - utterly removed from the desktop world, but perfect for those newfangled youths who were born in a browser... And it has an example structured document that happens to be a great dissertation about the outliner nature: https://www.theoutlinerofgiants.com/outliners >From that one, for some nice historical examples I recommend the sections covering Wordperfect and FullWrite Pro at http://www.atpm.com/10.03/atpo.shtml See ? Outlining doesn't have to bear the Microsoft stigma... That said, although I hate to be the one telling you that, Microsoft document compatibility is the contemporary user's main reason for using Openoffice or Libreoffice... They can't escape the comparison with Microsoft products. Same for the Samba project: it is great stuff in its own right and an unsung hero of cross-platform interoperability, but it owes its place in the sun to Microsoft replacement - why frame that as a bad thing ? But let's not that disturb this discussion of outlining functionality ! As for funding... If some credible insider from Openoffice or Libreoffice declared willingness and feasibility, I am pretty sure that drumming up funding from users would be possible - I pledge €100. But facing only hostility, users are evidently discouraged. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the issue. You are on the CC list for the issue.
