Issue 43030

Reproducible.

Reassigned to Sven.
@matthiasbasler: the "writer" left/center/right alignment
options are only for the paragraph, not for the complete textblock. Please have
a text with two or more lines and test. Here it works like expected. The
textblock can be anchored left/top but within the textblock the text can be left
aligned, centered, right aligned or justified.

@wq: Just as a remark: I personally know the difference, but it took some time
to figure that out. I believe that many "new" users might need a hint what the
difference is. My idea is to integrate alignment and anchor point into one
shared tab of a dialog and then have a preview that shows anchoring AND
alignment with a multi-line example. Maybe I should open a seperate issue for
that...

sj->wg: I don't see the problem. There is no difference between Writer and Draw,
both applications are having the same alignment options for text paragraphs and
text anchor. So can you please be more precise and explain the error you think
that is reproducible, In my opionion everything is working as desired.

With following two issues we will solve some minor problems, but this is only
for information and does not directly relate with this issue:

After fixing issue 42992 newly created documents will be centered by default.

The Writer is having a wrong default text anchor point when importing Word
documents, this will be fixed with issue 42783.

The problem is described under point 3. Insert Block arrow, enter text, right
click, text, text anchor is top center. Now set the anchor to top left, nothing
happens. Setting it to top center again moves the text to center. The same
settings as in the beginning but different text position.
Reassigned.

sj->wg: Take care of the full width option which is changed the second time, so
I don't see a bug further more.

Why are there options changed without me even touching them? If they are
deselected automatically then they should be selected automatically again whe
resetting. This is user confusion ad its best.

@sj: One point for you: I never noticed the "full width options". So this is not
really a bug, but seems to be one.

@wq: Two points for you: This REALLY IS user confusion.

Let me resume that there are currently tree different options needed to define
where and how a paragraph is aligned/positions and there is currently NO preview
that tells a user which option (text alignment, achor point and "full width" to
use to achieve which effect. Let me further emphasize that as pointed out above,
for short texts (that fit into the draw shape) there is NO visible difference
between
a)Text anchor point top left and "full width" off and
b)Text anchor point top center and "full width" on

I am certainly not one of the dumb users and I even read the manual quite often,
but imho this complexity goes beyond the horizon of most standard users.
Pless see this as an urgent request for improvement towards an intuitive
solution. Thanks.

Changed from defect to enhancement.

sj: For OOo 2.0 we were activating the FullWidth setting by default, because not
using FullWidth in a shape might lead to problems if storing to a Microsoft
format (for centered text they are only supporting FullWidth properly). And
being compatible is very important.

The fact that FullWidth is deselected when changing the text anchor is true
since StarOffice 4.0. But in my opinion it is no bug deselecting such a option,
because you are in the same tab page and you see what is happening.
If this issue should be fixed for OOo 2.0 should be discussed with the project
owner. And since this is a general drawing issue, please provide this issue to
the project owner afterwards.

PS: Since I prefer constructive critics myself, some suggestions:

A) Reduce the number of involved options to two.
My idea is to rebuild the anchor point control to look like the following:

         Left       Center       Right    | Full width
Top       [ ]         [ ]         [ ]     |    [ ]
Center    [ ]         [ ]         [ ]     |    [ ]
Bottom    [ ]         [ ]         [ ]     |    [ ]
Then the current ambiguous "full width" option below could be removed.

B) Combine text alignment and anchor point into one dialog
Currently text alignment is in he toolbar and in the Format->Paragraph dialog,
whereas the anchor point is in the Format->Text dialog.
This would also solve the strange effect that there exist both a
"Format"->"Paragraph" and a "Format"->"Text" dialog in the menu, which both
sound like they would be the very same ... but are not.

C) Install a preview similar to the one for image/object anchoring (or do a live
preview in the document!!!)

Reassigned.

 matthiasbasler: I like your suggestions, and I think the idea of a preview in
the dialogue is an excellent one.

 sj: I understand wjy you say "not a bug", but the 'principle of least
astonishment' also applies...

Because of limited resources we have to re-target this issue to the next
release. => set to OOo2.0.1

We should implement a solution at least for OOo 2.0.2.

Currently there are no resources to change the behaviour in this dialog for OOo
2.0.2, so this issue is flagged for office later.

Hello?