Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 125587
Character styles (styles and formatting toolbar) font tab - confusing and inconsistent behaviour
Last modified: 2015-01-24 20:10:35 UTC
Launch Oo writer and select the text document option. Enter some text and set the paragraph style to Georgia 16pt say. Now apply "emphasis" (in the character styles of the styles and formatting toolbar) to a portion of the text. As might be expected, italics are applied to the text. However there is an obvious source of confusion here because the "emphasis" style specifies "Times New Roman, 12pt, Italic", but only the italic attribute is being applied. There is nothing in the manual (p. 203 Oo 3.3 writer guide) or helpfiles to explain this inconsistency. The "contains" field of the organiser tab (for emphasis") shows the words "Italic, Italic, Italic." What is the user to make of this? And if the user alters an attribute in the font tab it causes an extra value to be added to the "contains" field." Confusing … Now try the following operations: After applying the "emphasis" character style to the "text body" text, change the "emphasis" font to "arial" say. If you now put the caret inside the affected words and read off the values in the formatting bar you will see that the font-size reads "16" even though the font-size in the "emphasis" character style is "12!" Undo this change and now change the "emphasis" font-size to 20. Put the caret inside the affected text and read off the values in the formatting bar. This time the font-size" is correctly given, 20 pts, but the font-style is still "Georgia" even though the "emphasis" character style is "Times New Roman!" Now undo this change and alter the "emphasis" typeface to "Bold". Check the formatting bar again and you will note that it reads "Georgia 16pt" even though the "emphasis" character style is "Times New Roman, 12 pt!" Thre is an obvious inconsistency to the behaviour. IDEA: Could the user interface for the Font tab and the "contains" section" of the orgnaiser Tab (for character styles, styles and formatting toolbar) be clarified to make explict WHAT attributes are being applied from the character style. IDEA: A check-box, for example on the font tab, that allows the user to specify that Typeface and type size are to be ignored, and only font style (bold, italic, normal etc.) applies. This would be the obvious efault settying for italicised text etc. And the "contains" section needs to be clearer about the attributes that are being applied: "Italic, Italic, Italic" is unhelpful and confusing. The relevant forum entry is at: https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=72134&p=324598#p324598
Created attachment 84454 [details] default Font options for emphasis.odt
I’ve investigated this issue on Mac OS X 10.7.5 and OO Writer *stable version 4.1.1, AOO411m6(Build:9775) *nightly build, version 4.2.0, AOO420m1(Build:9800) - Rev. 1651106 With the current “Font tab” design for “Characters Styles”, the user can’t say which character attributes are being applied and which are being ignored. This problem can be replicated for all the “Character Styles” in “Styles and Formatting”. This problem can be isolated by going though the cases bellow: I. Even though by default the “Contains” section in Organizer tab contains only Italics, the “Fonts” tab shows all the 3 attributes of the “Emphasis” style as selected: Times New Roman + Italic + 12. As a regular user I might not check the “Contains” section in “Organizer” and expect my text to be formatted with Times New Roman + Italic + 12 as I set in Fonts tab. Steps to reproduce: 1. Open a new document and insert text 2. Select the text and set the font type and size (e.g. ArialMT 14) 3. Open the “Styles and Formatting” window(press F11) 4. Click on the “Character Styles” icon 5. Click on “Emphasis” 6. Right-click -> Modify 7. Go to “Font” tab 8. Select the text you want to emphasize and click on “Emphasis” 9. Check the font and the size for the emphasized text in the Formatting toolbar Screenshot: default Font options for emphasis.png ODT file attached: default Font options for emphasis II. Attempting to select the font size that is selected by default in “Fonts”, will not be applied. If I want to set font 12 as the default font is, I will have to set first font size 13 and then modify it to 12. This is a side effect of the fact that the selected by default attributes “font” and “size” are not actually applied. Steps to reproduce this are: 1. Modify the default “Emphasis” attributes by selecting again the font size to 12 that is by default selected but not applied 2. Click OK 3. Apply “Emphasis” to a text that originally has font size 14 4. Check the applied style attributes in Format Toolbar and notice that the text doesn’t have font size 12 5. Modify again the “Emphasis” attributes by first selecting font size to 13 then 12 and hit OK 6. Check the text marked as emphasized Obs. 1: Character Styles are inconsistent with Paragraph Styles in OO. While applying “Emphasis” (from “Character Styles”) doesn’t apply the default selected font and size, applying “Quotation” (from “Paragraph Styles”) applies the default font size and type: Times New Roman + size 12. I would expect Character Styles to work the same way as Paragraph Styles. Attached is how the Paragraph Styles work in OO writer: Paragraph Style in OO.png Obs. 2: “Emphasis” in MS Word has default font type and size applied when selecting a text and clicking on “Emphasis”. They are “Based on: Default Paragraph Font”. Please see the screenshot “how emphasis works in word” Obs. 3: The documentation on Character Styles (Emphasis) can be found at: https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Writer_Guide/Using_character_styles There’s no explanation how the default font and size should work for Character Style or that they are different from Paragraph Style. I can see two ways of avoiding this confusion: 1. Don't show attributes as selected unless they are applied. 2. Have the same approach like Word or Writer - Paragraph Styles.
Created attachment 84455 [details] default Font options for emphasis.png
Created attachment 84456 [details] Paragraph Style in OO.png
Created attachment 84457 [details] how emphasis works in word