Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 111233
font effects "Hidden" and "Blinking" missing in Customize dialog
Last modified: 2017-05-20 11:20:05 UTC
Following this path in the OO-Writer 3.1.1 UI: --Tools menu-Customize-Toolbars-Add button-in Category list, select Format. --Problem: In the Commands list for Format command, Hidden Text is missing. Following this path in UI: --Tools menu-Customize-Keyboard tab-in Category list, select Format. --Problem: In the Function list for Format command, Hidden Text is missing. Dozens of Format commands are listed for both toolbar and keyboard, including Bold, Underline, and others much more obscure. Where is Hidden? As I writer, I use hidden text extensively in MS Word. I write alternate sentences/paragraphs, make notes, reminders, misc thoughts; then I select the text and click the Hidden button that I put on the toolbar. Quick, simple. To see the hidden text, click the Show/Hide button. Why can't I do this in OO-Writer? The only path seems to be: Select text, click Format menu-Character-Font Effects-Hidden. I searched the bugs/issue dbase, and found Issue 35980, which discusses another major problem with hidden text; the comments in reply say: "Hidden text like it is used in MS Word (as character format) has been implemented for OO Writer 2.0." Is this correct? In MS Word, I followed a similar "customize toolbar" path, found the Hidden command, and dragged it to the toolbar. A Hidden button was created. Simple. So per reply to Issue 35980, shouldn't I be able to do this in Writer 3.1.1? Or is the reply to Issue 35980 wrong? Thank you.
This does not only refer to "hidden text" but also to "Blinking" font effect. Additionally I was not able to find "Small caps", "Capitals" and so on in the customize options.
I'd like to add that I have worked a lot with MS Word, and want to stress that the way hidden text etc are implemented in OOo is not remotely like how it's done in Word. The only resemblance is in how it's available in the UI, but functionally they're completely different. For one thing, it used to be easy to assign toolbar buttons to them - there were even predefined graphics for hidden text, small caps and a lot more. For another, you could toggle hidden or small caps in exactly the same way as italics and boldface. In OOo, the only way to apply that formatting except by moving through tabs of the format character dialog box is to assign those properties to a character style, but you can't assign a character style to a toolbar button, and you can't toggle character styles on and off like italics and boldface. This is a sad defect, and all the worse for having been handled totally wrongly in the past.
It would be very nice if functions were available to handle more character attributes in the same way as bold/italic. I do wonder why are there situations like this where shortcut key can be assigned to apply a style, but not a button. It would be great if there was one set of functions, any of which could be bound to any of: a menu, a shortcut key or a toolbar button. Anyway, just for the record, the request for styles bound to toolbar buttons is: Issue 32915
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