Re: [libreoffice-design] Default values

Good evening Ricardo, all!

Am Dienstag, den 08.03.2011, 17:40 +0100 schrieb RGB ES:
> 2011/3/7 Christoph Noack <christoph@dogmatux.com>:
[...]
> > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Better_Defaults_General
> >
> > Another thing that might be helpful to know. If we have to decide
> > whether items (e.g. toolbar icons) should be available per default, then
> > we will (sooner or later) require serious usage data for that. At the
> > moment, we miss the updates by the "OpenOffice.org User Feedback
> > Program" [1]. So, if anybody sees the chance to work on that ... that
> > would be great.
> Sure. In fact, I'd said that there are no simple answers for the
> toolbar icons questions ;)

> But the autocorrect options I think is a more important issue:
> specially "Apply numbering - symbol" and
> "Apply border": they generate very irritated reaction from users
> (phrases like "I would like to know if there is a way to disable the
> irritating auto numbering and auto format functions" or "I want to
> completely disable the automatic numbering or bulleting of lists. They
> drive me crazy, and I would rather do any such by myself, my own
> way"... these and other appears quite often on the Community forums)

You are right - the autocorrect options are something that people who
want to be in full control (thus: no automatic or over-clever changes)
don't like. But, there are also guys who really love this feature.
Setting the default to "off" will just change the people who write such
comments :-)

To be serious again, this topic is - amongst others - one of those that
cannot be sufficiently solved with a changed default. Also in the UX
team at OOo we discussed that from time to time, so is my personal
summary:
      * The real problem is that changes are applied every time the
        software tries to identify the intention to insert (e.g.)
        bullets
      * The very first time, the Help Agent pops up and tries to inform
        the user. Although it's a good idea, it is totally unhelpful
        because it: pops up at a position where it is easily missed, it
        is just a picture without sufficient information, it doesn't say
        "hey, click on me" to get further information", it simply
        disappears after a certain time, people already went crazy
        because of "Clippy" --> bad preconditions :-)
      * User can revert the change by "undo" (which sometimes works,
        sometimes it does not)
      * There is no way to tell the software within the context: don't
        apply it this time, don't apply it in this document, don't apply
        it ever, what is this change about

So we might say the problems are: missing "self-disclosure", missing
controllability

This is one of those things, that Microsoft did right (mostly). Some
years ago, I've collected my thoughts on that - and although already a
bit outdated (because I would do some things differently), here is the
page I've started:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/DirectManipulationSnippets

Having such a framework would help to resolve a lot of other issues as
well. So this might be something, we might add to our list of
"WhatWeNeed" if we want to improve LibreOffice.

Cheers,
Christoph


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