https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91160
Bug ID: 91160
Summary: FORMATTING: Proposal to remove all horizontal and
vertical spacings from Writer style settings
Product: LibreOffice
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: enhancement
Priority: medium
Component: Writer
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
Summary: most style parameters could be hidden by default, and calculated from
a small number of global parameters set by the user.
This may seem a radical proposal, but discussing spacing just happens to be the
easiest way of introducing a different approach to style management that
eliminates the difficulties of the present arrangements.
For example, if you want to modify Heading 2, you are provided with 3
horizontal indent settings (in cm by default) and a tick-box labelled
Automatic. For vertical spacing you have 2 parameters in cm and another
tick-box. You can also choose the line spacing. That's just the Indents and
Spacing tab, for just one Heading level.
Change the font size (or even only the font) at that level or somewhere
upstream makes these settings inappropriate, particularly the ones in absolute
units like cm. While working on Heading 2 you can't see what you may have
already done to Heading 1 or 3, so there is no way of visualising
quantitatively to what extent your style scheme is internally consistent.
What's more, there isn't much in the style modification window, with all those
tabs that jump around, to tell you where the font and other parameters were
first defined, nor what effects your changes will have downstream.
Not surprisingly, very few LO Writer templates are available on the web, though
no doubt big users like the French Gendarmerie have expert development teams
for that. The current style structure really needs to be presented as a unified
organisation chart that shows the dependencies.
In fact, end users and enterprises should rarely have to think about such
matters. Typography is an art and a skill where the sizes of characters and
their spacing are a matter of proportion. Proportions would best be decided by
experts familiar with different national typographical conventions. If we take
this argument to its logical conclusion, nearly everything could be calculated
from what we could call a style policy file, to which the end user would have
to provide only a few parameters. Individual styles would, by default, be left
with very few settings and users who don't know what they're doing would be
discouraged from using advanced settings.
There's nothing innovative about that: it's the way LaTeX works. LaTeX was
introduced in 1977, mainly for academic publishing including maths; it
pre-dates most wordprocessors but is still very much in use. LO Writer has a
LaTeX export function, giving access to multi-language environments and
printing to professional standards. I'm not proposing that the majority of LO
users will need LaTeX, which never was much fun in the office. The point to be
made here is that the conceptual basis for what are now conventional
wordprocessors has taken an unfortunate turn. In other words, it would be time
for LO to stop trying to clone Word and adopt a different model.
In the beginning, LaTeX had only one font, it's own. That restriction has been
lifted and there are now several fonts specifically configured for the full
range of typographical tools. At the most basic default level, the user
indicates nothing but the basic font size and the language(s), leaving the
software to scale all styles accordingly. Not everyone needs to diddle
individual style parameters, though people often use the command \linespread to
globally stretch or shrink the preset line spacings. On the other hand you can
change anything you want if you use the plethoric help on the web to find and
configure a package (sort of plug-in) among the hundreds available.
LO is used for more varied and often less serious purposes than academic
documents. However, the proposed LaTeX-like style "policy" file should not need
very much user input. An example of a key stylistic choice is between indenting
the first line of paragraphs, or not indenting but adding space after. Also,
unlike out-of-the-box LaTeX we may declare 2 or 3 serif and/or sans-serif fonts
for text, headers and some other items. Scaling of styles should depend on font
metrics as well as the nominal size. You could imagine a few other global
parameters, for example to vary the rate of variation of relative font size,
case and character styles of headings as a function of their depth. But that's
about all.
Lists may be an exception worth more attention as a separate development. User
requirements vary from firing bullets at subordinates to the smooth but
stepwise presentation of a subtle and complex argument. Lists are difficult to
manage in LO because the list styles get tangled up with paragraph styles and
they require separate program menu items to set levels and turn them on and
off. I note that LaTeX has the powerful enumitem package for setting up lists.
This is easier than the LO facilities because it knows the width of symbols,
characters and labels, so spacings can be calculated. Sadly, it lacks a GUI.
--
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.
_______________________________________________
Libreoffice-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice-bugs
