Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 75522
Add action refinement menus to functions that can take parameters
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:35:59 UTC
While editing a document, I realized that a sentence from the body text was more appropriate as a footnote. So I did the following: 1. Selected it and cut it using CTRL+X 2. Inserted a footnote by clicking a toolbar button. 3. When the focus jumped to the footnote, pasted the sentence. But the problem here is that the pasted sentence does not automatically take up the "footnote" style. I have to click somewhere in the sentence and select the "footnote" style from the toolbar. Correct behavior is that any sentence pasted in the footnote must automatically take up the "footnote" format.
When pasting from Clipboard, the formats will always be taken "as is". Paste the selection as "unformatted text" into the footnote.
I agree with user raindrops; it would be useful.
MRU: In step-3, I tried to paste unformatted text by using the menu option: Edit > Paste special >Paste unformatted text. But it does not work: It pastes text with "default" format only; not in the "footnote" format. I have to click in the text and select the "footnote" style anyway. *** I tried another approach: 1. Paste the text directly (CTRL+V) 2. Select the footnote and press CTRL+SHFT+SpaceBar. Even then the text does not revert to the "footnote" format: It remains in the "default" style. So this does not work either.
Desired: When pasting text into footnote, its native formatting should be stripped, and the "footnote" format should be automatically applied.
I assume that this should read: the default behavior should be that the formatting is stripped. Paste/Special including formatting should still be possible. I'm not sure if this is a good idea. The same problem can happen in other cases and I don't see why footnotes are different in this regard. It is impossible to decide beforehand wether a user wants to paste his text in a way that the formatting should stay as it is or that it is taken from the place where it is pasted to. Users should explicitly used "paste unformatted" here.
Probably we also need the "smart formatting" pop-up dialog (OOo should offer options to the user, like MS Office)
If you are talking about "action refinement" interactions: yes. But this is something that takes time as we must first develop a concept for such a user interface and its integration into the current one. But this is also not related to footnotes. I don't see that they are so special. The same problems (default paste format unfortunate) can happen in other situations also.
I agree. But we do need a solution for that. I mentioned the "smart formatting" (that's MS buzzword) just in case no other idea comes forward. BTW the smart formatting applies only to pasted matter while pasting. Not afterwards. In other words, more formatting can be of course applied afterwards. All it does is to offer the user a choice whether he wants the original formatting or the destination's formatting.
Why do you think that we need another solution here? There is a perfect workaround: if you don't want to paste formatted text, use "Paste Special" that nowadays even has a shortcut (SHIFT-CTRL-V). This is surely not as convenient as an action refinement approach but it should be enough for the moment so that I don't see the necessity of a stopgap solution. As this problem is not special for pasting into footnotes and IMHO not even for the pasting functionality at all I would like to give this issue a broader scope. It should become an RFE for the implementation of an "action refinement" concept that for obvious reasons perhaps should start with the "paste" implementation. If you agreed to that I could change the summary accordingly. But IMHO we definitely don't need a special stopgap solution for pasting text into footnotes.
I am not against broadening the scope, of course. Please change the summary accordingly. The desired behavior is as follows: After pasting, a floating "paste" icon with a pull-down menu appears near the pasted text. It gives three options: 1. Copy formatting from source 2. Match the destination format (in this case, the "footnote" style) 3. paste unformatted text only MS Office behaves that way. *** @paste special: See my post on 20th March: The paste special does not do what I want: You have to apply the footnote format afresh. What I want is to paste the text such that it takes the attributes of the destination.
P.S. the floating icon vanishes if you press ESC. Otherwise it remains in place even if you move mouse.
P.P.S. The icon also vanishes if you start editing the document at any place. (It does not require press of the ESC key in that case). In other words, simply ignore it and continue working. The icon also appears when you copy/move the text by drag-n-drop.
I change the subject as proposed. We will work on a general concept for action refinements and will start to implement it for the "Paste" function.