Issue 11792

This is not a defect, it's a enhanvement.

I think something I've been struggling with right now is the same issue - see
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=users&msgNo=79744

A quick recap of that thread:
The problem was that changing language in Options...->Language
Settings->Languages, with "For the current document only" selected, which I
expected to change the global or default language of the document, appeared to
have no effect. I thought at first that something was broken in OOo 1.1.3, but
it turned out my problem was that the paragraph styles in my document had
language settings that would override the default.

So the issues are:
1. Once a language has been selected in the "Paragrah Style" or
Format->Character... dialogue, a language attribute has been added to the style
definition in question. There is no way to *remove* this attribute (and revert
to inherited settings.)
2. There is no way (that I'm aware of) of telling that a given paragraph has had
the language explicitly selected, as opposed to having the language it has
becuase it inherited it from the parent.

Actually, I some experiments I did right now lead me to believe that "Standard"
would help we with 1), although its function is documented as

Resets the values visible in the dialog back to the default installation values.

which is not what I want (I want to reset to inherited settings, not
installation values) - but perhaps the doc is not correct?

In any case, I think we really want a way to remove overridden settings
one-by-one. Also, in my case, there is a longish chain of inherited styles that
have to be "reset" to get the "document" setting where I want. Maybe a quick way
to update so that the attribute is taken from the ultimate ancestor, would also
be useful?

Another thought: The indication of inherited vs explictly configured setting -
see 2) above - should perhaps indicate where exactly the value was set?

At the bottom of the Stylist, the dropdownbox offers the option to view the
styles hierarchical, which in my opinion meets (at least partly) the needs
described in this issue.

Yes and no. That mode helps you find out what other style a certain style
inherits from, and thus also makes it easier to compare settings between a style
and its parent. Clearly useful in this context, but it's not what we are talking
about. 

What we are asking for is a way to find out which values within the style
defintion are inherited (according the hierarchy shown on the "Hierarcical"
view), and which values are set explicitly through the Paragraph Style box.
There is really no way of telling, as far as I know. Note that even though you
know that, say, Heading 2 inherits from Heading 1 and both have the "Arial"
fonts, you cannot automatically assume that Heading 2 inherits the typeface
setting from Heading 1. It might be that they just happen to have the same value
for the setting, which is not the same thing.

I now realise that there is a way of telling (see my last note), namely the
Organizer tab, as mentioned by the original poster. I think that functionality
is far from intuitive, though, and you really want to be able to tell just by
looking at the actual setting.

*** Issue 38936 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

issue 38936 suggests a label "as is/found" for the elements that are inherited.

So the font-dropdown would not show the inherited font like "Arial" but would
read "- inherited - " (or "not set" or something similar) instead.

This could be an intermediate solution.

It would be even better if the dropdown could convey the fact that the font was
inherited *and* what the actual setting is, though. Maybe it could contain
something like "Inherited: Arial", or be displayed in a different style or
something. To change from e.g. "Arial" to "Inherited: Arial", you would select a
new item named just "Inherit", as mentioned earlier.