Default paragraph style should be "Text body"

Bug #1990673 reported by Rūdolfs Mazurs
6
This bug affects 1 person
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Bug Description

Summary: when creating a new Writer document, the first paragraph has the style "Default Paragraph Style", which leads to surprising behaviour.

This bug has been reported in upstream [1], but at least some devs seem to believe that this is a packaging issue [2] so it might make sense to be fixed in downstream. Ideally fixed in upstream as well.

[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47295
[2] even though this issue is seemingly present on all platforms

Revision history for this message
In , Rūdolfs Mazurs (rudolfs-mazurs) wrote :

The "Default" paragraph style is not a good idea for a default paragraph style. A "Text body" would be more suitable.

Reason 1:
If "Default" is used as base style for all other paragraph styles. If a user includes this style somewhere in the document and then changes it through "Edit paragraph style" context menu command, like adding first line indent, it indents all other styles. This happens quite often, almost silently, and usually breaks appearance.

Reason 2:
When composing text, the normal paragraphs will have style "Default", however, after the first heading, the style will change to "Text body" and stay such. It could be argued that text before any heading is not typical "Text body", but not all writers set heading styles the moment they are written, especially, if text is copied and pasted.

The first problem can be solved by linking all other styled to something different than "Default" or making the default style of a new document something other than "Default" (this sounds a bit confusing).

Revision history for this message
In , Sasha-libreoffice (sasha-libreoffice) wrote :

Thanks for new idea
1. Problem may be in default template, not in program itself
2. Paragraph Style dialog, tag "Organizer", field "Next style"
so again, it is in template

So, this all may reformulated as this: "Use different template as default"

Revision history for this message
In , Jmadero-dev (jmadero-dev) wrote :

Can you provide a document that shows this behavior and what you mean by "breaks appearance". I'm going to mark this as NEEDINFO, once you provide the document please mark it as UNCONFIRMED and we'll take a look at it again. Thanks for your input on LO, we appreciate it :)

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In , Qa-admin-q (qa-admin-q) wrote :

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDINFO status with no change for at least 6 months. Please provide the requested information as soon as possible and mark the bug as UNCONFIRMED. Due to regular bug tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDINFO status with no change in 30 days the QA team will close the bug as INVALID due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our NEEDINFO policy please read the wiki located here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/FDO/NEEDINFO

If you have already provided the requested information, please mark the bug as UNCONFIRMED so that the QA team knows that the bug is ready to be confirmed.

Thank you for helping us make LibreOffice even better for everyone!

Warm Regards,
QA Team

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In , Qa-admin-q (qa-admin-q) wrote :

Dear Bug Submitter,

Please read this message in its entirety before proceeding.

Your bug report is being closed as INVALID due to inactivity and a lack of information which is needed in order to accurately reproduce and confirm the problem. We encourage you to retest your bug against the latest release. If the issue is still present in the latest stable release, we need the following information (please ignore any that you've already provided):

a) Provide details of your system including your operating system and the latest version of LibreOffice that you have confirmed the bug to be present

b) Provide easy to reproduce steps – the simpler the better

c) Provide any test case(s) which will help us confirm the problem

d) Provide screenshots of the problem if you think it might help

e) Read all comments and provide any requested information

Once all of this is done, please set the bug back to UNCONFIRMED and we will attempt to reproduce the issue.
Please do not:
a) respond via email
b) update the version field in the bug or any of the other details on the top section of FDO

Revision history for this message
In , Thomas-lendo (thomas-lendo) wrote :

I reopen this bug because I think it's worth discussing about it.

Summary:
Default Writer template should start with Text Body (paragraph style) instead of Default Style (paragraph style).

UX team:
Do normal users like the Default paragraph style? Would Text Body disrupt their workflow? Are users annoyed if there is vertical white space without using blank lines when doing a carriage return?

Personally I don't use the Default Style. For me it's the "master style" without any practical meaning, only used to define default text formatting for all other paragraph styles.

If it won't be taken into consideration, please close the bug again as WONTFIX.

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to Thomas Lendo from comment #5)
> Default Writer template should start with Text Body (paragraph style)
> instead of Default Style (paragraph style).

Fully agree. It's good practice and I also switch to Text Body.

> Do normal users like the Default paragraph style? Would Text Body disrupt
> their workflow? Are users annoyed if there is vertical white space without
> using blank lines when doing a carriage return?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107566594492891737454/posts/LC6AnLuQL9z

Revision history for this message
In , Vstuart-foote (vstuart-foote) wrote :

Sorry but before making such a change, the paragraph metrics for the "Text Body" need to be corrected as per bug 94464. The 120% proportional is incorrectly calculated against the font, and paragraph metrics for the style should default either to single space or correctly calculate the 120%.

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

*** Bug 108206 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

Created attachment 133716
Default vs Text Body

(In reply to Thomas Lendo from comment #5)
> Do normal users like the Default paragraph style? Would Text Body disrupt
> their workflow? Are users annoyed if there is vertical white space without
> using blank lines when doing a carriage return?

Normal users use the default paragraph style provided, which in Writer is 'Default Style' and in MS Word is 'Normal', which are both the root style for all other paragraph styles to inherit from. Presently 'Text Body' is a better default style than 'Default Style' as it has more line spacing and has a below paragraph value, which makes the text easier to read.

The problem with defaulting to Text Body and not moving its line spacing into Default Style is that other paragraph styles still look crammed, e.g. Quotations, Preformatted Text.

Revision history for this message
In , Thomas-lendo (thomas-lendo) wrote :

(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #9)
> The problem with defaulting to Text Body and not moving its line spacing
> into Default Style is that other paragraph styles still look crammed, e.g.
> Quotations, Preformatted Text.
I wouldn't change the Default Style but the other styles if they are not looking good enough.

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

(In reply to V Stuart Foote from bug 94464 comment 35)
> Changing the Default style to be 115% of selected font's line height would
> be inherited by _all_ styles--effectively changing a lot more than just the
> Text Body style.

Yes this would be ideal that it does change all styles.

> That would be a completely different and unintended effect disrupting all
> styles, templates and existing documents.

The templates would need to be updated to support this new change, but this would not disrupt existing documents which have a defined paragraph line spacing already set.

> We can't do that.

Don't see why we cant.

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

We now have 1.15 line spacing for text body. So I don't see any blocker for this request. Could be an easy follow-up for you, Jim.

Revision history for this message
In , Vstuart-foote (vstuart-foote) wrote :

The 100% font metric size is the core measurement for any textual content, not the value (115%) now assigned to Text Body.

Anywhere that uses Default paragraph (aka Standard) for multi-line spacing would be impacted by moving from 100% (as read from Font metric) to a proportional 115% scaling. And when lining up textual content (e.g. text boxes and frames) with paragraph styling gets disrupted.

We gain little by refactoring everything that inherits from default to pick up the value for Text Body.

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #13)
> The 100% font metric size is the core measurement...

Don't get your point as no one challenges the spacing in this ticket. It's only about moving towards "Text Body" as the default for the paragraph style.

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

Default paragraph style shouldn't be Text Body, as it will causing more problems than benefits, especially with interoperability, so this is a wontfix in my view. The issue of having 1.15 line spacing in the default paragraph style has been opened in a separate bug (bug 113517).

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #15)
> Default paragraph style shouldn't be Text Body, as it will causing more
> problems than benefits, especially with interoperability, so this is a
> wontfix in my view. The issue of having 1.15 line spacing in the default
> paragraph style has been opened in a separate bug (bug 113517).

DOn't get the interoperability point as this format would be what we use for newly created documents. I read your comment 9 as +1 for text body when spacing is solved.

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #16)
> DOn't get the interoperability point as this format would be what we use for
> newly created documents.

As mentioned in comment 9, Writer defaults the base paragraph style 'Default Style' and MS Word defaults to 'Normal', so if we decide to default to 'Text Body', working with .docx files will have a different behaviour than .odt files.

> I read your comment 9 as +1 for text body when spacing is solved.

I was +1'ing in comment 9 the use of line spacing of text body into default style is it is beneficial as default style currently is set to single spacing. So i've separated this issue into a separate bug, so there are no confusions here.

Revision history for this message
In , Thomas-lendo (thomas-lendo) wrote :

For me the 2 reasons stated by the bug opener are still valid. And moreover (despite what MS Office does) LibreOffice should ease the making of good-looking documents out of the box without e.g. changing the default paragraph style or switching to another paragraph style manually.

Good-looking means to me: paragraphs without using blank lines, good line spacing, etc. That is what Text Body provides.

Existing documents/templates shouldn't be affected to not interrupt user expectations.

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

Why should we care what other programs do when creating new files?
I hope that "working with .docx files will have a different behaviour than .odt files." because that's different programs. We also do not rename Default to Normal, right.

+1 to Thomas' comment

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

(In reply to Thomas Lendo from comment #18)
> For me the 2 reasons stated by the bug opener are still valid. And moreover
> (despite what MS Office does) LibreOffice should ease the making of
> good-looking documents out of the box without e.g. changing the default
> paragraph style or switching to another paragraph style manually.

When the bug opener opened this bug, LO 3.5 was out and the only difference between Default and Text Body was that Text Body had 0.08" spacing below paragraph and had nothing to do with line spacing.

The opener's reason 1 doesnt make sense to me, because if a user wanted a different indentation for particular paragraphs, he'd create his own paragraph style or use an existing paragraph style that isnt Default. It is obvious that if you dont want all text in a document to be affected by a change in a style that you wouldnt modify Default.

About the opener's reason 2, LO provides users who are heavy into styles (those who assign styles before or during editing) to automatically assign non-heading text to Text Body, while those who arent heavy into styles (those who assign styles after finishing their editing) to leave non-heading text without a paragraph style. Heavy style users may like this automatic setting of non-heading text to Text Body as an advantage as no other word processors (MS Word, WPS Writer, WordPerfect, Softmaker TextMaker, Calligra Words, Google Docs, AbiWord, iWork Pages) does this.

> Good-looking means to me: paragraphs without using blank lines, good line
> spacing, etc. That is what Text Body provides.

Text Body only provides that for itself and its child styles. So my reply in bug 113517 for more info.

> Existing documents/templates shouldn't be affected to not interrupt user
> expectations.

Yes if this change was made to the default writer template, and not to LO's behaviour, then it wouldnt affect existing documents.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #19)
> Why should we care what other programs do when creating new files?

As we care about interoperability, we have to care.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/107566594492891737454/posts/LC6AnLuQL9z

And lets not forget the poll results that 46% use Default, while 37% prefer to use Text Body.

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #20)
> > https://plus.google.com/u/0/107566594492891737454/posts/LC6AnLuQL9z

Striking argument. Who runs these stupid polls? ;-)

> (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #19)
> > Why should we care what other programs do when creating new files?
>
> As we care about interoperability, we have to care.

That's not the answer to "why should we care when we create our own new files". Your point is that when a new document is created in LibreOffice Writer we should care about saving it at some point to another program that might interpret our style differently from what is defined in the specification. Don't get the interoperability idea of "default" vs. "text body" in relation to _one_ program using "normal".

Revision history for this message
In , Rūdolfs Mazurs (rudolfs-mazurs) wrote :

Let me clarify what I meant when opening the bug.

The issue is NOT that the style named “Default” looks wrong. Problems arise from the fact that all other paragraph styles inherit from it, which leads to surprising behaviour. For example, if I add hyphenation to the “Default” paragraphs, I get hyphenation in headings as well. This is a gotcha (counter-intuitive, but documented, behaviour).

If the paragraph style for new documents would have been named “Default”, which would inherit from template called, lets call it “Baseline” and all other documents would inherit from said “Baseline”, then I there would be no bug. However, I do NOT think this is necessary, just don't use the “Default” style for the new documents.

My suggestion to use “Text body” style (Reason2) was proposed only because it is used after headings. If people like the formatting of the “Default”, make a new style, let it inherit all the properties of the ”Default“ style, call it something generic, like “Paragraph”, and use it for the first paragraph in new documents.

I don't think this would break any existing documents or affect interoperability.

Revision history for this message
In , Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85) wrote :

(In reply to Rūdolfs from comment #22)
> The issue is NOT that the style named “Default” looks wrong. Problems arise
> from the fact that all other paragraph styles inherit from it, which leads
> to surprising behaviour. For example, if I add hyphenation to the “Default”
> paragraphs, I get hyphenation in headings as well. This is a gotcha
> (counter-intuitive, but documented, behaviour).

This is how inheritance works so there is nothing wrong with this behaviour.

> If the paragraph style for new documents would have been named “Default”,
> which would inherit from template called, lets call it “Baseline” and all
> other documents would inherit from said “Baseline”, then I there would be no
> bug. However, I do NOT think this is necessary, just don't use the “Default”
> style for the new documents.

New documents start with a paragraph that has not being assigned to a paragraph style, which is why it appears as if it is assigned to the 'Default' paragraph style. Similarly when no character style is applied to text, it appears as if it is assigned to the 'Default' character style.

> My suggestion to use “Text body” style (Reason2) was proposed only because
> it is used after headings. If people like the formatting of the “Default”,
> make a new style, let it inherit all the properties of the ”Default“ style,
> call it something generic, like “Paragraph”, and use it for the first
> paragraph in new documents.

It is the normal with all word processors to not assign a paragraph style to a new blank document.

> I don't think this would break any existing documents or affect
> interoperability.

No i dont think this change would break existing documents, as users could easily create a default template which had text body as the default, the interoperability issue i was mentioning was about other apps not using 'text body' as default and not assigning 'text body' after headings which results in different behaviours in LO when working with documents created outside of LO and those created inside LO.

Regina, Sophie, Cor: Do you guys have an opinion?

Revision history for this message
In , Cno (cno) wrote :

IMO a good suggestion.
A change won't affect interoperability.

Revision history for this message
In , Thomas-lendo (thomas-lendo) wrote :

As nobody has added new insights in the last months, can we do it or not?

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to Thomas Lendo from comment #26)
> As nobody has added new insights in the last months, can we do it or not?

UX input has been given so waiting for a dev. Or do you want to try yourself?

Revision history for this message
In , Vstuart-foote (vstuart-foote) wrote :

Yes UX input is that our standard ODF, aka "normal", document templates be changed to use Text Body style to Paragraph where now Default style is assigned. Some change to source is expected to be needed to assert Text Body where now Default style is applied.

Other styles that inherit from Default are not going to be changed.

And to be very clear there is no agreement to modify Default style--changing its line spacing (bug 113517) looks to be a WONTFIX.

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In , Olivier Hallot (olivier-hallot-w) wrote :
Revision history for this message
In , F-thaler (f-thaler) wrote :

Somehow, this wasn't implemented yet...

Here's my input as a (somewhat) new user:
1. Having 'Default Paragraph Style' as the beginning-default seems counterintuitive. Very rarely do most inexperienced users do anything, that requires the default style to immediately be available.
The argument that "At the beginning of the document, no styles are assigned -> 'Default Paragraph Style'" sounds convincing, but from the perspective of a user that just wants to quickly get work done it doesn't make much sense.

2. Looking at my parents (who probably resemble the big non-technical userbase), it's horrible to see this happen:
    2.1. Makes a new document
    2.2. Writes a little (or a lot of) text
    2.3. "Oh, let me add a title"
    2.4. "And lets add headings!"
    2.5. "And lets add a little text after the headings!"
    2.6. Continues writing
  2.7. After all this work, formatting everything is a nightmare. You can't just change 'Text-body' to have certain traits and be done because, well, half of the document was written using 'Default Paragraph Style'. And you shouldn't change 'Default Paragraph Style' because of obvious reasons.
  Which means, you (the new-to-LO-user) most likely has to select EVERYTHING, turn it into 'Text-body' and format it or format it directly. Alternatively, the user could format each paragraph individually.

Having to go through such a frustrating process when either trying out LO for the first time or when being a non-computer-fluent user makes people run back to Microsoft Word. Which I hate to see because LO is amazing.
Having the shipped document-templates start with 'Text-Body' is a good improvement to LibreOffice, in my opinion.

Revision history for this message
In , F-thaler (f-thaler) wrote :

(In reply to Olivier Hallot from comment #29)
> https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Writer_for_Students/Text_Body

On the bottom of the page, there even is this note: "Note: Never use the paragraph style Default for your body. The Default style is there to fix general settings for all styles. It’s a common mistake."

Meaning, that it's not just a rare mistake, few users make. Changing the starting style to 'Text-Body' should fix this issue.

Revision history for this message
In , Vstuart-foote (vstuart-foote) wrote :

*** Bug 139727 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

*** Bug 139845 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Gustavopi-u (gustavopi-u) wrote :

This thread have some duplicates and it has been here since 2012... not sure why it has never been corrected yet. There is a claim that is not really an app problem, is not in the code, but it's part of the package, it is some kind of coding, and it is ruining the experience of the new users!

Thought it's time for some deliberation about this. It won't be so complicated to get some basic collections of style with some educational institution, maybe in Vancouver System already. It's time to Libre Office go pro!

Revision history for this message
In , Rafael Linux User (rafael.linux.user) wrote :

I agree. "Text body" should be default paragraph style.

Revision history for this message
In , Randy (rscragun) wrote :

LO version 7.2.1.2

Note: this comment uses “DPS” to mean “Default Paragraph Style”.

In the default template (and the “Modern” template, which I think came bundled with LO on install), none of the 2nd-level paragraph styles (one level below the DPS or inheriting directly from DPS) has DPS set as the “Next style”. However, the Headings style (and the Text Body style) is set by default to have Text Body as the next style. For people who use the template as-is, this means that the order of composition of a document will often determine its styling:

1. Users who start by writing a title or heading will likely have Text Body styled paragraphs for the rest of the document. This outcome is probably desired.

2. Users who start by writing a few paragraphs and then a heading and then another paragraph will have a few paragraphs of DPS style and a few of Text Body style. This outcome is not desired and may cause confusion.

Some principles I think most people would agree with:

A. The default template should not be designed with the assumption that users will understand the details of style inheritance

B. The order of composition of a document should not determine its styling

C. If the most-commonly-used paragraph styles are set to be followed by Text Body, the template is pushing Text Body as the main style to use for most paragraphs

D. Most users who *do* understand the difference between DPS and Text Body prefer to use Text Body for most text

E. Users who do *not* understand the difference do not care much what style they use and just want a consistent experience

All of this points to the conclusion that Text Body should be the default style selected when the Default template and Modern template are used. (A related issue is that the name “Default Paragraph Style” may confuse users, who will wonder why LO keeps changing the style after Headings to Text Body. Perhaps this should be renamed to something like “Master Paragraph Style”.)

Revision history for this message
In , Gustavopi-u (gustavopi-u) wrote :

(In reply to <email address hidden> from comment #36)
> LO version 7.2.1.2
>
> Note: this comment uses “DPS” to mean “Default Paragraph Style”.
>
> In the default template (and the “Modern” template, which I think came
> bundled with LO on install), none of the 2nd-level paragraph styles (one
> level below the DPS or inheriting directly from DPS) has DPS set as the
> “Next style”. However, the Headings style (and the Text Body style) is set
> by default to have Text Body as the next style. For people who use the
> template as-is, this means that the order of composition of a document will
> often determine its styling:
>
> 1. Users who start by writing a title or heading will likely have Text Body
> styled paragraphs for the rest of the document. This outcome is probably
> desired.
>
> 2. Users who start by writing a few paragraphs and then a heading and then
> another paragraph will have a few paragraphs of DPS style and a few of Text
> Body style. This outcome is not desired and may cause confusion.
>
>
> Some principles I think most people would agree with:
>
> A. The default template should not be designed with the assumption that
> users will understand the details of style inheritance
>
> B. The order of composition of a document should not determine its styling
>
> C. If the most-commonly-used paragraph styles are set to be followed by Text
> Body, the template is pushing Text Body as the main style to use for most
> paragraphs
>
> D. Most users who *do* understand the difference between DPS and Text Body
> prefer to use Text Body for most text
>
> E. Users who do *not* understand the difference do not care much what style
> they use and just want a consistent experience
>
>
> All of this points to the conclusion that Text Body should be the default
> style selected when the Default template and Modern template are used. (A
> related issue is that the name “Default Paragraph Style” may confuse users,
> who will wonder why LO keeps changing the style after Headings to Text Body.
> Perhaps this should be renamed to something like “Master Paragraph Style”.)

Well pointed. However, this issue is here since 2012... For some reason, developers don't take this serious because is still in LO 7.2.2, among with other issues related specially to academic work (what you relate will occurs usually). I have to say, sadly, that I have to work with MS Office and to advise everyone to do the same.

Thought this issue is child of a parent issue that is not taking serious the academic text production.

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In , David Chmelik (dchmelik) wrote :

I don't believe you nor agree, because not everyone is necessarily even writing a paragraph rather than writing as a text editor just with nice formatting, which might be anything, like unorganized note(s), to-do & shopping & reading lists with no paragraphs nor list formatting, all in plain or formatted text or informal HTML... just let people use it like a text editor, without assuming what type of document they're making (nor forcing any other sort of setting/style, especially post-Internet).

Revision history for this message
In , F-thaler (f-thaler) wrote :

Speaking of my own experience, when trying to teach people how to properly format their documents, the biggest issue we face is this "Default Paragraph Style".
Due to improper defaults, most of their past documents happen to mix "Default Paragraph Style" and "Text Body".

Thus, just to have nice, centralized control over how their document looks, they are forced to learn multiple features of LibreOffice all at once:
• Text-Styles themselves, which can be complicated enough
• The fact that "Default Paragraph Style" exists and was forced upon them, but should not be used
• The styles-portion of Find and Replace (Ctrl+H), to get rid of all "Default Paragraph Style"s and turn them into "Text Body"
• Templates, to fix the first line of their future documents being "Default Paragraph Style"

This makes the learning curve WAY more complicated than it needs to be. It worsens the user-experience.
It saddens me to see many non-tech-savvy users return to MS Office whenever they can; partially due to default behaviors like this one.

Revision history for this message
In , Rūdolfs Mazurs (rudolfs-mazurs) wrote :

(In reply to David Melik from comment #38)
> not everyone is necessarily even writing a paragraph rather
> than writing as a text editor just with nice formatting

Right now Text Body style is the same as Default Paragraph Style, except it has some spacing below the paragraph. Even if Writer was predominantly used as a fancy plain text editor, this formatting is not a problem.

However, if the LibreOffice community decides that for a new document there should be as little formatting decisions made for them as possible, there still should be another dummy style to avoid the inheritance gotcha (see comment #22).

In any case, even after 10 years, I still think that for a new document, the first paragraph should have "Text Body" style. Clarc has given more than enough reasons to make the change.

Changed in df-libreoffice:
importance: Unknown → Wishlist
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
In , Gustavopi-u (gustavopi-u) wrote :

After ten years, thought this discussion became pointless. They obviously won't fix it ever because of other reasons rather than technical difficulties or some plausible justification.

This productivity suite has all is needed to be a powerful tool for students and maybe for academic production, also as a reference for the market, as GIMP. But it has a small bug here and there... for decades. So is still some free stuff to fill distros, that's all, and we should be happy and don't complain because it is free.

So this is more about some internal developmemt metrics of not being so perfect so it will never face ahead "professional" suites as MS Office, thought. I'm out!

Revision history for this message
In , Telesto (telesto) wrote :

FWIW: I'm not a PS Style expert.. I'm not even sure if the below could be implemented at all (compatibility reasons). Only thinking out loud..

A) I surely grasp inconvenience mentioned in comment 30 comment 36. Where the order of actions has influence on the formatting. Terrible, IMHO

B) Default Paragraph Style is actually "Master/Parent Paragraph Style" (like comment 5 points out). It's not a ordinary style, in principle it affects all other Paragraph Styles except if those other paragraphs explicitly define otherwise. Currently the 'Master/Parent Paragraph Style is set to be default too.,

C) There is the (taste) question: do you like the 'Text Body' formatting to be default.. comment 38

A way out would be to change Next Paragraph Style from headings and such to Default Paragraph Style instead of Text Body. However you likely into the issue at comment 22.. so no go

If the current called Default Paragraph Style would be renamed Master Style or Parent Style. And a new Style introduced: a 'dummy' style: which would be an empty style.. so exact copy of Master Style or Parent Style (the current Default Paragraph Style), called yet Default Paragraph Style. And this style would be made default, instead of the Master Style: problem 22 would be gone.

If you change Next Style to the 'future' Default Paragraph Style (instead of Text Body), the formatting difference would be gone as mentioned under A

If you prefer different look you can modify the Default Paragraph Style (new), without affect all other styles. Sadly it's impossible to say: replace Default Paragraph Style (new) by say Text Body Style. Which would make it easy an existing PS style to something else of desire. Why would I manually configure the default Paragraph Style to match the specifications of Text Body.

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In , Cno (cno) wrote :

(In reply to Rūdolfs from comment #40)

> In any case, even after 10 years, I still think that for a new document, the
> first paragraph should have "Text Body" style. Clarc has given more than
> enough reasons to make the change.

I've just again read all comments in this bug.
- There is no technical reason given: nothing will break.
- It will improve the use of text documents.
So from there: let's do it.

However, I think some caution is needed: I remember once have seen an issue where some default style/setting (in Calc, Writer..?) did have influence on some import activities.
- Hence adding Miklos and Michael in CC to ask: do you expect any issue around this?

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In , Vmiklos-y (vmiklos-y) wrote :

I agree that Writer's default vs text body choice is inconsistent; Word just uses Normal for both initial para style and after heading. Improving consistency in this area sounds useful. If this is just a UI change for new documents, I expect no problems.

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In , Cno (cno) wrote :

(In reply to Miklos Vajna from comment #44)
> I agree that Writer's default vs text body choice is inconsistent; Word just
> uses Normal for both initial para style and after heading.
How ugly :)

> Improving
> consistency in this area sounds useful. If this is just a UI change for new
> documents, I expect no problems.
Thanks Miklos!
Any code hints? Possibly easyHack?

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In , Vmiklos-y (vmiklos-y) wrote :

The task is to track down how the SwTextFormatColl for the only text node in a new document is created, so it doesn't point to "Default Paragraph Style", but to your new wanted paragraph style.

I guess one can place a breakpoint on the SwTextFormatColl ctor, find the caller that inserts that pool item to the document and adjust. I don't have anything more specific off the top of my head.

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In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #45)
> Any code hints? Possibly easyHack?

Prolly could be done via default template.

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In , Sdc-blanco (sdc-blanco) wrote :

Not a showstopper, but....

Note that many Autocorrect features (e.g., Combine single line paragraphs..., bug 59034 and bug 59036) work only with "Default Paragraph Style".

Also this change may turn some bugs into features, see especially bug 90507, also bug 95433.

iow -- this change will probably result in diverse interactions with Autocorrect [M] or [T] functions -- which could, in principle, be a new project, especially if the idea here seems to be to move more or less the use of Default Paragraph Style into the background, where expert users can use it for inheritance.

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In , Mikekaganski (mikekaganski) wrote :

(In reply to Miklos Vajna from comment #46)
> The task is to track down how the SwTextFormatColl for the only text node in
> a new document is created

I hope it would help with other situations that must be considered to fix this issue: e.g., create a text document; set its only paragraph to Text Body style; add a table; put cursor into the very last cell of the table; press Alt+Enter (this creates a new paragraph after the table) -> that new paragraph is "Default Paragraph Style" currently (bug 116655). Possibly the task could be to track creation of the default item in the item pool?

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In , Cno (cno) wrote :

(In reply to sdc.blanco from comment #48)

> iow -- this change will probably result in diverse interactions with
> ...
Fair enough!

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In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :
Changed in df-libreoffice:
status: Confirmed → In Progress
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In , Heiko-tietze-g (heiko-tietze-g) wrote :

Gazillion unit test depend on this, abandoning the patch https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/154846

Changed in df-libreoffice:
status: In Progress → Confirmed
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