Hi Yan,

Did you look under Options in Find & Replace. Format, Attributes??

I think it is just there.. Not?

Cheers - Cor

Hi

Oh, really, it's there. Sorry, didn't know about that. Thank you so much, you've helped me a lot :)

Maybe it would be good to make an external button for this action, but, personally, I think it's extra. So moving to notabug.

Kind regards,
Yan.

*** Bug 156488 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Trying to find a workaround, I created a new character style from the selection. This allows to see the applied attributes in the Organizer tab of the style.
When searching for formatting, the list of attributes below the Find field are very similar.
But, in both cases, it is not possible to select and copy (as to copy the attributes from the new style and paste them in the find dialog).
At least I don't need to guess what are the attributes applied that I need to search for.

(In reply to Yan Pas from comment #0)
> [...] so editing documents with this feature would be easier.

And easier to change direct formatting with styles to the selected text.

Changing status to unconfirmed (see https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=156488#c3), not sure if this is expected.

Feature is available in Google Docs (see duplicate bug 156488 Description) and MS Office (see Description here).

I think a context menu item would be an overkill, but could imagine an extra "Format from selection" button in the Find and Replace dialog, next to the "Format..." and "No format" buttons.

UX/Design team, what do you think?

(no need to have 156488 in "see also", it's already a duplicate)

We resolved requests like this by pointing to the F&R dialog. And reading comment 1 and 2 seems to do it here too. Why not close WF/NAB?

aydsys@gmail.com 2023-07-27 16:34:34 UTC
Can i make another argument, without this feature LibreOffice Writer simply does not suit certain task. Like quick formatting of poorly formatted large documents. I see commands like "select to beginning of a word" and "to the end of line" are implemented. This command\feature is really missed for certain tasks.

[tag] [reply] [−]Comment 3Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-07-27 17:17:19 UTC
OK, but please reopen the original bug 94989 and let's keep this one as a duplicate. Add your supporting argument there. We can then copy the UX/Design team in for their opinion.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 94989 ***

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #7)
> We resolved requests like this by pointing to the F&R dialog. And reading
> comment 1 and 2 seems to do it here too. Why not close WF/NAB?

The F&R is absolutely not the place anyone would look for this functionality, because:

1. Neither "Find" nor "Replace" suggests "Select", and certainly not "Select all at once".
2. That functionality in the F&R dialog kind of bastardizes it, replacing the "Replace" box with a drop-down listbox; it doesn't seem to naturally fit there.
2. I personally keep forgetting I can do that through the F&R dialog, and that's after I've seen it before already!
3. F&R is not something that's opened from any context that involves styles.

So, not only should this not be closed, I'd say that the accessibility only through F&R is even a (usability) _bug_. So I would remove the "enhancement" characterization and make it a regular bug.


(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #6)
> I think a context menu item would be an overkill,

Ah, but a context menu for the main Writer pane; the context menu for styles in the sidebar.

The topic was on the agenda of the design meeting but did not receive further input.

The request has an unclear use case: selecting all text with a certain formatting should have some purpose, which likely has alternative/better ways to achieve. The F&R way to "select all text with the same formatting" is efficient and clear enough. It has been decided in the past to suggest this workflow.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #10)
> The topic was on the agenda of the design meeting but did not receive
> further input.

It received my input, even if I couldn't attend the meeting. And there is Ady's input from the dupe bug. It should also be noted that this "design meeting" was just yourself. Which is not your fault of course, but it was still just you making decisions.

> The request has an unclear use case

That is an unserious claim, Heiko. It's the use case known very well from Microsoft Office.

> selecting all text with a certain
> formatting should have some purpose, which likely has alternative/better
> ways to achieve.

1. Not so. You can want to see what kind of use a style is put to in the document, _before_ deciding whether you want to do something with the style or with the content that has the style applied.

2. There are several purposes for such selection, and Ady pointed out a common purpose, which translates into a common use case of this feature in MSO: Reformatting or deleting the relevant content en masse. Also, for any purpose for using the search-by-style in the F&R dialog - the same purpose applies here, except that the search is simpler to achieve with this feature if a known existing style (or style+DF) is what you're searching for.


> The F&R way to "select all text with the same formatting"
> is efficient and clear enough. 

I have established how that is absolutely not the case in comment #9, and no argument has been made to the contrary (according to the design team session minutes). So I just don't see why this was not marked as NEW. Please mark it that way.

"Select All Text with Similar Formatting" is a killer feature of Microsoft Word.

I use it all the time when:

- Cleaning up direct formatting
   - ESPECIALLY in converted (or poorly formatted) documents.

and use it to quickly:

- Map Direct Formatting -> Styles.
- Correct Problem X in one swoop (similar to a super quick "Find All").

In Word, this becomes:

- A few button presses + can be done in a few seconds.

In LibreOffice, this is:

- Wrestling with the Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) menu + various mixes of the "Format"+"Attribute"+"No Format" buttons...

... and hoping you got it right. (Very error-prone.)

Currently, when you click the mouse into something:

- The computer KNOWS what the format settings are + can go searching for an exact match!!!

- - - - - - - -

For one use-case, see my recent comment in:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/18t2551/writer_whats_a_good_way_to_change_all_bullet/kfe7g5m/
   - Especially "Side Note #4".

While the original user wanted to:

- Select all bullet points / lists in their document

I use it to:

- - -

CASE #1: SELECT ALL CHAPTER "HEADINGS"/"SUBHEADINGS"

For example, User A consistently chose:

- CENTER + BOLD + 16 pt

to create their chapter titles.

In Word:

1. Click in the paragraph.
2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting".
- This selects all "headings".

3. Click on the "Heading 2" Style.

BOOM, now all my Chapters are marked properly.

[... Repeat for subchapters, and sub-subchapters, etc. ...]

KEY NOTE #1: Especially for conversions from other formats, like using:

- Calibre EPUB->DOCX conversions
- Finereader PDF->ODT conversions

all headings might not have proper Styles... but at least they are all CONSISTENTLY carrying the same direct formatting information.

KEY NOTE #1.1: This is also non-contiguous "Find All"-type selection too, but WAY easier/faster than trying to do similar through the current Find & Replace (Ctrl+H).

- - -

CASE #2: SELECT ALL "ITALICS"

A conversion/export from another program may have done a:

- "Times New Roman/Italics" font

instead of using actual italics.

In Word, currently, this is a:

1. Click in the "italics" word.
2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting".
- All matching spans of text are selected.
3. Click on the "Emphasis" Character Style.
- Or push Ctrl+I or "I" button.

Right now, in LibreOffice, you have to wrestle with all sorts of:

1. Find & Replace (Ctrl+H)
2. "Format" button.
--- Hope you selected the right attributes.
3. "Find All"
4. Scroll through the document, hope you got your settings correct.
5. Click on the "Emphasis" Character Style.
- Or push Ctrl+I or "I" button.

(Then, it's only after you are scrolling through the document, you find out WHOOPS, you missed edge-case X, Y, or Z... so now you have to try to undo and find the equivalent buried setting/menu/option in LO.)

KEY NOTE #2: In Word's Step 1+2, if I select an italics word in the BODY TEXT, Word WON'T match italics in a heading or elsewhere.

(This is, super key for progressively cleaning up documents in passes.)

In LibreOffice, this find/select all is currently impossible—you can only search for ALL ITALICS, not a "all italics inside the body text".

Or, again, you'd have to wrestle and hope you got the exact matching font/font size, etc. WHY, when LO already has this info whenever you click your cursor into a piece of text?

KEY NOTE #2.1: LibreOffice already has the advanced:

- X-Ray/Styles Inspector (Alt+6) feature too.
   - (But not way to harness this to find "matches" in a user-friendly way.)

- - -

CASE #3: SELECT ALL "COLOR"

Quite often, exported/converted books (especially InDesign) are not using text colors that are:

- Automatic
- Black

Quite often, they are:

- Dark Gray
- Near-black
--- (Probably CMYK-based instead.)

Quite often, this type of crap also gets carried over when someone:

- Copies/pastes from a website/somewhere.
- Overrides with their own direct formatting.

For example:

If the website's text was near-black, but the book's main text is pure black, User A may never notice... so you'll have random CHUNKS of text throughout with slightly different nearly-black colors.

(Usually, the book might have many blockquotes and things, copied/pasted from the same source, so the book is full of SIMILAR—but not-quite-exact—types of direct formatting errors.)

This type of stuff is *extremely hard* to catch with the naked eye (or even with a good eye for LO).

In Word, this is a simple:

1. Click on weird "oddly colored" word.
2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting".
3. Select the color you want from the dropdowns.
- OR apply proper Styles.

In LibreOffice, this would be an:

- Impossibly-frustrating wrestling of the Find & Replace dialog + "Format"+"Attribute" buttons.
- + constant wrestling with the "No Format" to reset your search.

KEY NOTE #3: Similar situation happens with hyperlinks.

Sometimes the colors in different programs are not-quite the same as LO's hyperlinks, so they have slightly different shades of blue. Hard for human to see, but if you do find one, it becomes a simple 3 button presses in Word.

In LibreOffice, it becomes an impossibly frustrating hunt through "Format"+"Attribute" and hope you got the exact hex color correct.

(Yes, there's also hopefully hyperlink Character Styles, but see Case #4 below.)

- - -

CASE #4: CONVERTED MARKUP (PANDOC)

See my breakdown in:

- https://old.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/10wydhr/change_font_size_of_specific_style/

The user converted their text documents to DOCX using pandoc.

This resulted in a lot of Paragraph/Character Styles, such as...

The "Source Code" Paragraph Style:

- Cambria
- Regular
- 6pt font

but then this gets overridden by 3 Character Styles:

- ExtensionTok
- NormalTok
- VerbatimChar

In Word, you'd be able to:

1. Click in a syntax highlighted word.
2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting".
- All matching Character Styles are selected.
3. User could tweak as needed.

Even a user who was completely unaware of Character Styles would be able to adjust this quickly/easily.

(Yes, yes, I know, we should discourage Direct Formatting as much as possible, but Character Styles ARE extremely arcane/buried too—even I don't use them that often and only in sparing cases [emphasis/italics].)

KEY NOTE #4: Also, search/replacing Character Styles is currently impossible. See Bug #78582.

This type of "Select All Formatting" will be able to get you lots of that power in a much more user-friendly way.

- - -

SUMMARY

For basic/common users, this feature gets packaged into:

- A much more user-friendly/user-intuitive way to mass adjust/correct/change documents.

For intermediate users, you can:

- Combine this with the "Spotlight" Styles Highlighter.
   - Notice something weird?
   - Click on it + Similar Styles + choose the Styles you meant.
      - LO would've found/fixed all matching oddities.
      - (For example, like the "multiple bullet lists pasted-in-from-who-knows-where user" on Reddit.)

For power users, this feature:

- Lets you properly tag Styles MUCH MORE quickly.

(Seriously, this is a few minute job in Word, but I don't touch LibreOffice's method with a ten foot pole.)

(Instead, I do my document-full-of-spaghetti cleanup in Word/elsewhere, then import into LibreOffice later.)

(In reply to Tex2002ans from comment #14)

It could be more useful to establish your point with a video rather than a wall of text :-)

... or even better - invite yourself to a design meeting to talk about this. I want an opportunity to make the case for this as well. And maybe we should push for this to be a tender in 2024 (if tenders get going again).

(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #15)
> It could be more useful to establish your point with a video rather than a wall of text :-)

I think I broke it down well into reasonable chunks for each use-case.

Also see my expansion which I wrote the next day:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/18t2551/writer_whats_a_good_way_to_change_all_bullet/kfgwks4/

where I wrote a tutorial on how to:

- Find all Bold text + Replace with Bold+Italics+Red

and how long each one takes:

- 3 steps = Word
- 14/18+ steps = LibreOffice

With Word, you also don't even have to leave the main UI.

With LibreOffice, you have to consistently go 1/2/3 menus deep.

- - -

COMPLETE SIDE NOTE:

> ... or even better - invite yourself to a design meeting to talk about this.

Last I checked, the time for those meetings is "European time", so WAY TOO EARLY in the morning for me ("American time").

But perhaps one of these weeks/months, I might make it there.

I also have to finally write up + submit the "Dark Mode UI Overhaul" to Bugzilla too:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/1811l38/question_about_dark_mode_application_colours_icons/kac65oa/

Perhaps early next year. :)

- - -

> I want an opportunity to make the case for this as well. And maybe we should push for this to be a tender in 2024 (if tenders get going again).

Sure. I don't mind beating the drums elsewhere too.

As always though, while this feature SEEMS SIMPLE on the surface, this is a complicated spaghetti nest of multiple functions hidden inside a single selection... depending on how nasty the document is + where your cursor is located.

So it needs lots of great test documents + will probably require lots of dev time to iron out all the strange edge-cases.

(In reply to Tex2002ans from comment #16)
> - Find all Bold text + Replace with Bold+Italics+Red
What exactly is "bold text"? Could be Default Paragraph Style + Bold font weight as direct formatting, or + Strong Emphasis character style, or + any character attribute that include font weight >400 (many fonts offer more than one value), or any paragraph style + any character style + one particular weight attribute.
My point here is that "all text with the same formatting" is probably not always the same. 

> - 3 steps = Word
> - 14/18+ steps = LibreOffice
Ctrl+H, alt+M, (here you may have to activate the Font tab), alt+S, "Bold" (simply typing B could be enough), enter, enter

Apart from that I understand the wish but cannot wrap my mind around the exact requirement (and consequently solution). Have you had the chance to see if the Styles Inspector is an alternative?

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #17)
> Have you had the chance to see if the Styles Inspector is an alternative?

Yes, and while I slept on it... the Spotlight feature already HAS a lot of this "detect same Styles/Formatting" logic in there... at least I think, because it already generates those unique numbers + colored boxes!

So, one potential workflow may also just be something like:

- Letting the colored "Spotlight" number boxes be clickable too.

So you could:

- - -

SELECT / CHANGE / MAP TO A NEW PARAGRAPH STYLE

1) View > Styles (F11)
2) In the sidebar, all the way in the bottom-right corner:
- Check the "Spotlight" box ON.
3) The colored "Spotlight"/Style boxes appear next to each paragraph.
- Right-Click on colored box > "Select All Same Style".

Step 3 would then act as if you did a:

- 1) Ctrl+H
- 2) Check the "Paragraph Styles" box.
- 3) Choose the given Style.
- 4) Pressed "Find All".

4) In the Styles sidebar:
- Select what Style you wanted.

- - -

> What exactly is "bold text"? Could be Default Paragraph Style + Bold font weight as direct formatting, or + Strong Emphasis character style, or + any character attribute that include font weight >400 (many fonts offer more than one value), or any paragraph style + any character style + one particular weight attribute.

Heh, yes, exactly.

What would be considered "unique" formatting? And what could effectively be considered "the same" or "duplicate"? ... it's a tricky problem.

But, you can look into things like:

- Calibre's DOCX->EPUB (or ODT->EPUB) conversions.

Calibre ingests documents—no matter how disgusting and full of direct formatting—and spits out HTML+CSS that has:

- Unique CSS classes per "same format".
- <p>s + <span>s with unique classes.
  - <p> ≈ to LO's Paragraph Styles.
  - <span> ≈ to LO's Character Styles.

Usually it boils documents down to a few dozen (or few hundred) classes, even on the very ugliest of documents.

* * * * * * * *

Side Note: Another thing to look into is what I've called:

- "Surgical Editing"

(I've written about this since 2021—and tools have since come out to drastically speed this up.)

I split "same Styles" into 3 types:

- 100% Exact Match
- Very Close
- Similar

When I do EPUB->EPUB conversions, I progressively strip more and more "useless" CSS formatting + selectively "ignore" certain attributes when making comparisons:

- Fonts
- Font Size
- Colors
- [...]

then merge "same" CSS classes together.

For example, this CSS:

- - -

.normal {
    font-size: 1em;
}

[...]

.class98 {
    font-size: 1em;
}

.class99 {
    font-size: 1.1em;
}

.class100 {
    font-size: 1em;
    color: black;
}

- - -

where:

- 100% Exact = 1st and 2nd.
- Very Close = 3rd compared to 1st/2nd.
   - 1em ≈ 1.1em
- Similar = 4th compared to 1st/2nd, and potentially 3rd.
   - font-size = exact match, but color is different.

Using these "CSS comparison" tools, this lets you quickly merge/strip/join CSS classes together, really cleaning things up.

For more info, see my writeups in:

- 2023: "Quick way to remove all class invokations for missing classes?"
  - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4359877#post4359877
- 2021: "Adding a limited Automate Feature To Sigil"
  - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4156269#post4156269

and when I first began brainstorming the idea/workflow in public:

- 2021: "Possible To-Do List for Future Sigil Releases Post Sigil 1.8"
  - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4165819#post4165819

I KNOW this works in HTML + CSS, so I know it's possible. :)

* * * * * * * *

> My point here is that "all text with the same formatting" is probably not always the same.

If you play around with Word's "Select All Similar Formatting" though, they do a damn good job at all sorts of cases. :)

Easiest to tackle would be 100% matches. The others get progressively harder.

But, I mostly use this feature in Word to quickly:

- Map Direct Formatting -> Styles

Like:

1) Click on a BOLD + CENTERED + 18pt text.
- Select All Similar Formatting
- Change to "Heading 2" Paragraph Style.
2) Click on a paragraph with NO INDENT + 12pt text.
- Select All Similar Formatting
- Change to my custom "first" Paragraph Style.
3) Click on a paragraph with SMALLER FONT + SLIGHT INDENTS ON LEFT/RIGHT.
- Select All Similar Formatting
- Change to my custom "blockquote" Paragraph Style.
4) Click on an ITALIC piece of text.
- Select All Similar Formatting.
- Change to "Emphasis" Character Style.

So making it work on selecting "exact same" cases alone would be a HUGE step in the right direction.

> Apart from that I understand the wish but cannot wrap my mind around the exact requirement (and consequently solution).

Hmmm, well, it should still be available in the main UI itself (similar to Word's)...

But perhaps Spotlight can be enhanced to do similar too.

And the nice thing about Spotlight is that you can HIGHLIGHT/SEE the formatting.

I've used similar "highlight the formatting" workflows over the years while editing HTML/CSS too. See the images I attached in:

- 2023: "Semantic markup question!"
  - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4314437#post4314437
    - yellow = <i> Italics
    - orange = <em> Emphasis
- 2020: "Is there a way to edit EPUB or Mobi files such that the Quotes are in BOLD?"
  - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4065080#post4065080
  - https://i.ibb.co/GJxV2Kh/Blockquotes-PDF.png
  - https://i.ibb.co/hHBQ4J8/Blockquotes-EPUB.png
    - Blue = blockquotes
    - Brown = NO INDENT
    - Red = take a closer look, because it happened on a pagebreak.

This allows me to scan through a book, focusing on pieces of formatting at a time, and progressively clean and mark things up in waves. :)

I can also map custom colors to how aggressively I need to check:

- Blue = Means my brain can ignore it. I already know it's correct.
- Red = I need to pay CLOSE attention + verify correct formatting.
- White / No Highlight = If needed, I can pay a little attention to these areas.
  - (Or ignore in this pass.)

Spotlight already has the rough groundwork of "color the underlying formatting"... but it's missing some customizations and things to make it a SUPER DUPER (and intuitive) killer tool. :)

(In reply to Tex2002ans from comment #18)
> - Right-Click on colored box > "Select All Same Style".
Well, the point of styles is to apply everywhere. No need to select :-).

> - "Surgical Editing"
How about some piece of text where italic is used for Emphasis and another for Caption. I think the F&R way is more surgical than some probability method. MSO might look smart in some cases but fails in complex scenarios.

How about forwarding this topic for an extension? Maybe the author of AltSearch is interested.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #19)
> (In reply to Tex2002ans from comment #18)
> > - Right-Click on colored box > "Select All Same Style".
> Well, the point of styles is to apply everywhere. No need to select :-).

Not sure whether you meant this as a joke, but - you do need to select if you want to do something with that content (other than make changes to the named style). You can:

* Delete all of it
* Remove DF in it.
* Switch it to another style
* Apply some DF to it
* Cut or copy it
* Make it into a bulleted or numbered list
* Word-count it
* Just get an impression of where it's used as you scroll through the text, especially when you zoom out

and if what you've selected is not a named style but some style+DF - then also

* Define a new named style based on it

> > - "Surgical Editing"
> How about some piece of text where italic is used for Emphasis and another
> for Caption. I think the F&R way is more surgical than some probability
> method.

1. (Perhaps Tex2000Ans mis-spoke, but) this bug is not about being surgical, it's about selecting _everything_ and then looking at what you've selected or doing things with the selection or parts of it.
2. F&R is not a (surgical) editing tool. You can switch out of the dialog, do an edit, then continue, but that's not convenient and it's difficult to intuit what the dialog will do when you get back into it and click next.
3. F&R for is effectively inaccessible like I've already argued.

> MSO might look smart in some cases but fails in complex scenarios.

1. Please elaborate.
2. It is useful in many common scenarios, like the ones


> How about forwarding this topic for an extension? Maybe the author of
> AltSearch is interested.

"Make it an extension" is the little brother of "let's describe things better in documentation"... :-(   No, we want this in vanilla LibreOffice.

I will concede, however, that in MSO, we use this feature just to inspect which content has the style, while in LO we have the style spotlight, which offers this functionality to a certain degree, for named styles.

(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #20)
> you do need to select if you want to do something with that content [...].
> You can:
> * Delete all of it
> * Remove DF in it.
> * [...]

Yes, Eyal. Full agree with that list.

There are many extra use-cases too (including the ones you+me listed).

And:

- "Does this text looks a little f i s h y?"

Do I know where letter-spacing is hidden in LO's submenus? No.

But I do know: 

- Word = Click, Select All Similar, Click = Fixed.
- LibreOffice = Prepare for a huge adventure through the menus/docs!!! :P

> I think the F&R way is more surgical than some probability method.

I just named my ebook editing methods that way, because most conversion tools do:

- - -

METHOD A: Mass "strip/ignore formatting"

Similar to how in LibreOffice, you typically try to quick clean by doing do a:

- Ctrl+A + Ctrl+M
  - (Select All + Clear Direct Formatting)

Then you'd have to go in and try to:

- REIMPLEMENT a lot of your "clean formatting" back on top.

METHOD B: Convert ALL formatting

Then you'd have to go in and try to:

- STRIP a lot of the "useless"/direct formatting.

- - -

This "selective" approach lets you quickly correct large chunks of Text / Styles / Direct Formatting / problems in a systematic, piece-by-piece, user-friendly way.

> F&R is not [...] convenient and it's difficult to intuit what the dialog will do when you get back into it and click next.

Yep, full agree there too.

Word's "Select All Similar" method—where you stay within the main document UI—is key for scrolling + looking at what's highlighted, THEN letting you decide what to do with that information.

With LO's current method, you are going from UI->menu->UI->menu->sub-menu, HOPING you guessed+filled in all the information correct—(and know where to find it)—then pressing "Replace" and "Replace All" and crossing your fingers, hoping you didn't mess up!

> How about forwarding this topic for an extension? Maybe the author of AltSearch is interested.

Or a killer expansion/feature of LO itself. :)

> while in LO we have the style spotlight, which offers this functionality to a certain degree, for named styles.

Yes. The Spotlight was a HUGE step in the right direction.

And I've already used it to debug some very tricky Styles issues where I couldn't figure out WHAT THE HECK Word was doing in the innards of some DOCX files. :) (Why that ONE paragraph/heading is acting strange compared to all the others.)

- Spotlight tagged it as a different number (or gave it diagonal slashes, meaning Direct Formatting was hidden there).
   - Then I knew where to look.

I've already showed it to a few Editor friends on webcam/screenshare, and they wished they had the Spotlight feature. :)

Now we just need the opposite—one of Word's killer features baked into LO too, but made even better. :)

We've got support from 4 different contributors, in comment 0, comment 8, comment 9 and comment 14, plus another in https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/writer-select-all-text-paragraph-with-same-formatting/14183, illustrating how it could help users move to using styles more quickly, like in comment 18.

Marking as "new". Now I'd say we need some agreement on where it should live, and if we start with exact match, or go straight to a more complex "similarity" idea - which would be subjective by definition...

Could be a GSoC idea, if it is clearly scoped out on a dedicated wiki page?