https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126546
--- Comment #34 from ajlittoz <[email protected]> --- I think this is primarily a psychological problem. New users have a real difficulty to switch from a past (successful) routine to a new workflow. They don't even read the basics about the application they want to try. And this carries over when they use it regularly. Adalbert Hanßen has nevertheless quoted the most relevant argument in comment 22: >in the manual it says “using styles means that you shift the emphasis from >what the text >(or page, or other element) looks like, to what the text is” but failed the implication. He still thinks about appearance, not about significance which is the ultimate goal of style markup: add semantic value to runs of character. In Writer, the three main formatting layers are independent from each other except for the precedence rule when it comes to display the final result. The markup has boundaries in each layer. After all document encoding is XML and boundaries <xxx> … </xxx> are "natural". And XML never constrained the markup to be "strictly nested". This fact allows the independence of each layer. In the paragraph layer, the boundaries are at paragraph marks. By default, the same PS is applied when you press Enter or you switch to the configured Next_Style. Otherwise you must assign manually a new style. In the character layer, there are no implicit boundaries. You enabled some CS and you disable it manually. IMHO, this is a good thing. When I type a series of contiguous semantically-related paragraphs, I expect all my significance markup (PS+CS) to be kept when I start a new paragraph. As an example, imagine the following scenario: - my main topic is Text_Body - I want to add a few caveats about my main topic but this is not different enough to deserve another PS. I then assign Strong_Emphasis at the start of the caveats paragraphs and type them - when I return to my standard main topic, I just disable Strong_Emphasis (applying No_Character_Style) Also, when I split a paragraph, I expect *all* layers to keep their present settings. Since this is a split, it would not make any sense to reset CS (and DF) even if I add a word at start of new paragraph. I want to remain in control of what I typed because semantic markup is author's responsibility and Writer can by no means guess what is in my head. There is also a point that Adalbert missed. A paragraph can be associated with a list style. There are two schools for this: the style one where the list style is declared in the PS, making the PS dedicated to list item, and the DF one where a toolbar button is pressed to turn the paragraph into a list item. When Enter is pressed, most users expect the "list attribute" to remain active so that the next item is entered without any other manual operation. If CS+DF should be reset at end of paragraph, I imagine most users will then complain that this behaviour is not "intuitive" at all. As a conclusion, if the request to reset CS+DF at end of paragraph is submitted to vote, my opinion is "against". PS: (see end of comment 33) the present formatting state is reflected in the toolbar buttons. Of course, this doesn't tell which layer activated it (PS, CS, DF). But colouring the button might be impossible because of the "themes". Status colouring would override theme colouring (or conflict with it) and I already anticipate complaints on AskLO by users trying to understand why some buttons become suddenly unreadable. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
