Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 56782
Make Tools > Language less confusing to people looking to change the langauge
Last modified: 2007-01-18 16:18:07 UTC
I'm afraid this is yet another request mainly aimed as prevent prospective customers from Micro$oft Word giving up after one go, but it also saves people like me ages trying to work this out. [I've put this as an issue in Writer, but similar issues may apply to other components.] This request is also partly derived from Issue 55066. Langauage setting are (correctly, IMHO) put under format character to change some or all of the language in the current document, or Tools > Options to change the default language for all new documents. However, there are some specialist language-related functions available under Tools > Language. This is all well and good if you know how to change the language and you know how to use these specialist features, but very confusing if you are a newbie tying to change the language, because that is the only obvious place to look. My suggestion would be to add two "shortcut" features to Tools > Language that automatically take you to the correct box. One would be "Set Default Language" which would go straight to the Langauge settings in the Options menu. The other would be something like "Set Language". This I'm not so sure about. The easiest thing to do would be to take you to the Font tab in the Format Character box where the language setting is, but that's still a bit on the confusing side. Alternatively, perhaps "Language" should be made into its own tab in the format character menu, then that would give a bit more versatility (such as giving the options to apply the langauge settings to the entire document or just the current selection/paragraph/section etc.) But that's digressing into another feature request so I'll stop there.
Reassigned to SBA.
Good suggestions, this is definitely worth discussion... maybe you could raise this on dev@l10n or dev@native-lang? It may also be confusing to distinguish between "Default language" and "User interface language" - maybe we need a term like "Default language for documents" in the Tools/Language just like it is in the Language Options. Alternatively, it may be easiest to add a "Language Options" link to Tools/Languages that takes you to the dialog, so there is no confusion.
*** Issue 55066 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
SBA: Confirming issue. Reassigned to requirements.
Very similar to OOo 3.0 task i20710.
. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 20710 ***
closing