Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 19340
Make different paragraph styles within a textbox as well as character styles possible
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:20:06 UTC
When opening a new presentation, you click on the textbox to enter some text. This works fine. Then you double-click on a style in in the stylist in order to assign it to the text, which does not have any effect. Right-clicking an entry in the stylist opens the context-menu with only modify in it, assign is missing. In RC 3 this problem was similar but occured only when the text in the box was bulleted using the bullet-button in the toolbar. The same behaviour was reported in the mailinglist about calc and writer, as well as draw.
The issue is more a request for enhancement it seems, than a bug. The stylist/styles cannot be applied in textboxes. IMHO they should be applicable to text in textboxes. Workaround: write your text in writer first, copy-paste it into impress, so it is a writer-component in impress rather than a simple textbox... But this seems unusable because hardcoding the styles to your text in textboxes is easier.
Little addon: Just checked with RC4. The stylist is disabled in textboxes in Writer/calc, styles cannot be applied to textboxes there. In draw/impress the stylist is enabled, styles can be applied but only one style per textbox. Which again renders it useless, because you need a textbox for every style you wish to apply. Hardcoding the styles by applying font size, bold, nubering directly or by format>character works fine though - even in the same textbox, in draw/writer/calc/impress.
Reassigned to Christian.
I think it is RFE not a defect. please explain why we need stylist in text box, and need more than one style. if you can, better to add sample documents
For example: You have a bullet point and then a line to explain the bullet point, then another bullet point and another line to explain that one. Are you really serious about having to add another textbox every time you change the style of the text? Everytime you insert a new one you have to make sure it is perfectly aligned with the one above, thus you will have to use the grid, unnecessary worktime in my opinion. Further, if it is possible to hardcode, i.e. using the menus, different styles/formats in a textbox, why should it not possible to use the stylist to do exactly that? As far as I am concerned, the stylist is a kind of shortcut for formatting, replacing the need to go into the menus everytime you want to change a format/style. Finally, this bug is not only about having different styles in a textbox (issue 19343), but the fact that in RC3 the stylist worked, applying styles to a textbox, even if it was only one per box. Now even this functionality is gone, hence this is a bug and not a feature.
The styles are one of the _good_ things in OO, it should be built uppon. I am just writing a presentation and I would really like to be able to change bullets, headings, fonts... the way I do in writer. But it isn't possible, so you end up doing things over and over again. The outline view is great, it really gives you an overview (and it doesn't exist IMHO in the other office program) But it's only good if you have simple things to do. Because if the alignement/font/sizes become a bit more complicated and you cannot apply any styles, then you end up being in the drawing-view all the time. Styles are not too easy to learn. But if you know the power of them then it's great - why should they only be of use in the writer? Why not make one consistent way to do things?
Okay, MY reason for wanting to be able to apply styles in a textbox. If I want a textbox to contain a heading style (which I might change later -- the reason for styles in the first place) and a following paragraph to have Text Body style and a quotation inserted to have Quotation style, I cannot do it in the textbox at all. Strange as it may seem to the developers, I have done that in frames, but frames do not behave the way I want them to, which is why I want to use a textbox frame. Thus, I have a need for the ability to apply styles to text in a textbox. I don't understand why this should be so hard to understand.
Hi Bettina I think this is a RFE. Therefore I send the issue to you. Please have a look. smile :o)Christian
Created attachment 12532 [details] Demo document
*** Issue 19340 has been confirmed by votes. ***
*** Issue 63588 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 19343 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 48724 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Tested with OOo 2.0.4, WinXP PC. Problem still persists: Cannot assign different styles to individual sections of text within a textbox; styles are always applied to the whole textbox. Changed summary for clarity (was: "Stylist does not work in textbox"). Set target to 2.X (sorry if it offends- but should be kept on the radar). Cheers, Andrew
This issue is three years old. It was not updated by the assignee, neither considered or given any visible attention. Since the OO devs are known for marking almost everything as enhancement (how convenient), I have given up on the usefulness of reporting anything to this project. Since I report bugs to all kinds of opensource projects I may say that this is the worst bug handling I encountered so far, except for Gimp/Gnome. Yeah, you are going to tell me that if I do not like OO and the way the devs work, I should simply leave it alone, since nobody forces me to use it. Very convincing!
set target 3.x
*** Issue 41852 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 50013 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 57296 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Adding me to CC
*** Issue 88618 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Could the description of the issue be changed in something referencing character styles availability within Impress? I think this would avoid the proliferation of duplicate issues. Also I would like to report here some excerpts from the comments made on issue 57296 which I think give a better idea of what is needed. -- Redux in January 2007 i would particularly welcome this functional addition in order to get far better presentation-level handling of things like consistent hyperlink colours...at the moment, it seems backwards having to either manually recolour each hyperlink, or setting the entire OpenOffice suite's link appearance in the preferences. -- nemoresus in March 2007 I fully agree, impress can do a bunch of text formatting but its style support sucks. It does not have paragraph styles either, only some hardcoded styles applied to the whole text of text-boxes ! One can use style by inserting a OOo-text object but styles are not shared between them (and it makes editing way more painfull). Presentations are not only used as "one shot" eye catching things, their consistency is also important for some people! -- jvromans in March 2007 Seconded. Not having character styles is a BIG omission. I produce a lot of training materials for Impress and maintaining consistent styles is a pain. Also, not having character and paragraph styles undermines the statement that OOo is a single, consistent program instead of a conglomeration of loose tools, like MSO is (or must I say, was?). -- aschwarzie in May 2007 The lack of character styles or the ability to easily copy and paste character formating is a significantly impacting weakness, especially when it comes to polishing the elements of a bulleted list, by "highlighting" key words.
Agree with previous comment. And thanks for summing up the info! Summary was: RFE: Apply different styles to sections of text within a textbox Now is: Make different paragraph styles within a textbox as well as character styles possible
Hello Cor, Thanks for changing the summary. I am not very happy with the idea of allowing custom paragraph styles. You can modify the 9 existing one as well as insert "normal" text boxes (not autolayout ones). What is really missing in my opinion is the ability of defining and applying character styles (e.g. hyperlink, coloured text, emphasis, quotes, monospace for code and so on.) In summary I think the summary of the issue should be something like "add the capability in Impress to create, modify and apply character styles" Cheers, Michele
Of course it is important to be able to have more than one paragraph-style per text-box. Using multiple text-boxes is just working around that issue and making things more complicated than neccessary. It absolutely does not make sense if users end-up selecting whole paragraphs and assign character-styles to them, just because the most obvious solution, i.e. paragraph-styles, is not available.
Hi Michele, Rabauke, I agree with Rabauke that also paragraph styles are very much welcome.
change subcomponent to 'formatting' (so that I can find this issue easier ;)
wrt the request for outline / paragraph styles: pls see http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ/Impress/How_can_I_create_new_styles%3F And in the Help: Index > 'slide designs', follow link to 'Styles and Formatting' I only found this recently. It is not the most flexible solution, but certainly allows to work with different styles throughout the presentation.
*** Issue 69745 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
This should be changed to a defect because it is not like writer. If this feature works one way in writer and another in presentation then one of them must be wrong.
Hello, I do not think this is a defect but rather a new feature for Impress. I also still believe that the emphasis should be on character styles rather than paragraph styles. At present, users of Impress can (have to?) learn to appreciate a styled approach to writing a presentation/document and by allowing the creation of new paragraph styles besides the already existing ones we will lose this. Presentations created with Impress are almost automatically very consistent in their appearance, something that every user appreciates and that comes as a freebie. On the other hand, in my experience I found the lack of character styles that may be used to emphasise sections of the text consistently across a presentation a very bad shortcoming and something that makes people doubt about the level of integration of the various components of OOo. Cheers, Michele
*** Issue 81742 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Let me add a little comment: I'm surprised that six years after having wished for this enhancement (and after several people had had the same wish, see duplicates), it's still not there in OOo 3.1.1. I don't see why having character styles should be more difficult to implement in Impress than in Writer.
*** Issue 110152 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
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To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".