https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86483

--- Comment #28 from Ming Hua <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #26)
> So this specific proposal needs to clarify
> why some workflow (1) needs the Default template (it isn't properly handled
> by "use a specialized non-"Default" template, e.g. also bundled, or
> available as an extension"); (2) requires the template to include
> locale-specific information; and (3) this all (having those settings in the
> Default template) can't be implemented by existing mechanisms, such as
> clearing up the shared common template to eliminate locale information, and
> making sure that in the absence of that information, it is populated from
> current defaults derived from user-configured locale.
I am not a heavy Writer user and knows little about Writer templates (or
template in general).  But since both the reporter Kevin and I are simplified
Chinese (zh-CN) users, I think I understand him better than most people on
Bugzilla and want to chime in.

Technical details aside (when to use the "Default" template, when to not use
any template at all; whether it's better to have one default template for all
locales, or to have locale-specific ones), I think the issue boils down to that
Western text documents and Chinese text documents have fundamental formatting
conventions, and therefore users have different expectations.  The current
situation is that Writer with default configuration, even with zh-CN locale and
zh-CN UI, doesn't meet the expectations of Chinese users.

The most commonly mentioned example is the formatting of ordinary paragraphs. 
The formatting convention for Chinese text is "first line indent of two
character width, no extra space between paragraphs".  I believe traditional
Chinese (zh-TW and zh-HK) and Japanese also have similar conventions (though
Japan uses one-character indent at the start of paragraph).

Now LO provides the special length unit "Character/ch" when CJK is enabled, but
AFAIK it's not set to default for indents (and the implementation has room for
improvement, but that's another story).  So for Chinese Writer users, no matter
he/she uses "Default" template or not, the first thing to do is adjusting
formatting/style and set them to the Chinese convention.

Is template the correct approach to solve this issue?  Would resolving this
difference achievable with a single "Default" template?  If not, is it better
to have locale-specific template, or is it better to just add a "Chinese Text"
template, and have the zh-CN UI to translate the two "Default" and "Chinese
Text" templates to "Western Text" and "Default" in Chinese instead?  The
aspiring l10n community member probably needs a lot of input from developers
here to figure out where to work on next.

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