Created attachment 145435 [details] dialogTabs.png: screenshots of "scrollbar tabs" verses "stacked tabs" Being unable to see all of the available tabs for a given dialog box is a huge discoverability bug in my opinion. I suppose this is a theme-ing thing, so the answer then would be to change away from such non-functional theme. But I don't think I have such a theme on my computer. Bug started in LO 6.2 from Caolán McNamara 2018-09-18 18:12:10 +0200 commit 6d184e2e23b319128f94649f4e15c2f7bcbffca9 weld SwParaDlg Ubuntu 18.04 with Cinnaon 3.8.8 and Arc-Darker controls theme using bibisect-linux-64-6.2.
This is true. They are now real GtkNotebooks instead of vcl TabControls themed to look like GtkNotebooks, so how they now operate (under gtk3+) is under gtk's control rather than vcl/libreoffice. The change from libreoffice double (or triple) decker tabs is one of the two (other is the entry-less combobox untype-aheadable menus) problems that worries me most. so... a), what is worth noting, is that a right click on the notebook tab area will bring up a list of tabs for the instant overview of what's available. b) this particular dialog is sw/uiconfig/swriter/ui/paradialog.ui, editing with glade will show, for the GtkNotebook entry "tabcontrol", under General, the tab position option. That can be changed from "top" to "left" in which case the overview of what's available is again possible, though at the possible expense of being a even more radical change to the ui. https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/61487/ is an example of that for format->paragraph. Does that seem better or worse to you ? Given the feedback at the recent LibreOffice conference I'm inclined to risk changing to left aligned tabs at the crossover point where the tabs become scrolled. (FWIW in impress/draw format->styles->edit) has 16 tabs, I think that's the maximum number we currently show
Created attachment 145464 [details] dialogTabsRightClick.png: compare comment 1 suggestion, and show right-click result Pros: So the left-side tabs work OK in this situation, and in general taking up width rather than height is generally a good thing in today's computing environment. Cons: Char/Para dialog is now different in style from all the other tab dialogs (where the tab stays on the top). Plus I to do not really like changing the UI from what people are used to when there is no benefit. My conclusion: both options are bad. Likely this is a new GTK/theme thing? I still see double-decker tabs on my 16.04 (also arc-darker theme). The lesser of the two evils is to keep tabs on top and hold on to a hopeless hope that GTK people will fix their misguided designs. Side note: The transparency tab is missing some tab label (labeled as Page 10).
"Likely this is a new GTK/theme thing?" The change is from the old case of using LibreOffice TabControls which are themed to look (something like) GTK Notebooks, to the new case of using real Gtk Notebooks. And real GtkNotebooks don't offer double-decker tabs. "Cons: Char/Para dialog is now different in style from all the other tab dialogs." Reading https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/unstable/controls-notebooks.html.en#controls-too-many-tabs the suggestion there is to use tabs on the left for > 6 entries and on top for less. So my current thinking is to go with version 2 of https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/61487/ which automates that for the native GTK3 dialogs. So everything with > 6 tabs would have them appear on the left. "Side note: The transparency tab is missing some tab label (labeled as Page 10)", that menu is the native GTK notebook menu. I seem to see the same behaviour on the last tab, regardless of the number of tabs. Filed that as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/1397
Caolán McNamara committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=0cde3c332d2cc5c470998b6c1ba39705c64621b5 tdf#120371 follow GNOME HIG on tab placement on mega tab notebooks It will be available in 6.2.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
If this doesn't pan out, the remaining possibility is to bodge up a replacement notebook-alike gtk widget.
(In reply to Justin L from comment #2) > > Cons: Char/Para dialog is now different in style from all the other tab > dialogs (where the tab stays on the top). Plus I to do not really like > changing the UI from what people are used to when there is no benefit. Another Con I would add is that now the paragraph dialog no longer looks consistent across platforms. the tab are displayed on the left in gtk3 but not in gtk3/gen
(In reply to Justin L from comment #2) > Likely this is a new GTK/theme thing? > I still see double-decker tabs on my 16.04 Oh, I'm forcing gtk2 even on development builds on my 16.04 with /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh export SAL_USE_VCL_PLUGIN=gtk. I forgot about that lovely capability. Version: 6.2.0.0.alpha0+ Build ID: 853b84c307191c2d6fd0ac697328abb9ac8ef22a CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk2;
Caolán McNamara committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=117e8ff822f04dbb639ceafffa3f1786bba870ed Related: tdf#120371 relax tabs on left It will be available in 6.2.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
There is a similar request in bug 99528. The vertical "tabs" would be a special solution and could be designed nicely with big icons. But the drawback of such a solution is that we want to fit into the system look and feel (what a pity). So if a user is accommodated to single line bars they likely expect what you dislike (for good reasons).
Created attachment 145669 [details] screenshot It's ok like this? Version: 6.2.0.0.alpha0+ Build ID: 144da6d5079bcd435e6637cb5cf95305f3ec1306 CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk2; TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@70-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2018-10-12_02:13:01 Locale: ro-RO (ro_RO.UTF-8); Calc: threaded
screenshot of comment #10 is "VCL: gtk2". Its only the gtk3 variant that is using native GtkNotebook, gtk2 continues to use the vcl TabDialog themed to look somewhat like a (gtk2) GtkNotebook
*** Bug 121155 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Caolán McNamara committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/+/bf379a1054bdf84fc05550e5b9e600b50e04769e%5E%21 Related: tdf#120371 a scheme to provide multi-level notebook tabs It will be available in 6.3.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
I still believe that tabless dialogs with expanding/collapsing areas and scrollbars are overlooked as a possibility. An initially-collapsed state of all categories would provide a nice overview of all the options ("tabs") right in the main dialog area (vertically), and expanding an area could also bring it to the center of the dialog's main area.
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #14) > I still believe that tabless dialogs with expanding/collapsing areas and > scrollbars are overlooked as a possibility. An initially-collapsed state of > all categories would provide a nice overview of all the options ("tabs") > right in the main dialog area (vertically), and expanding an area could also > bring it to the center of the dialog's main area. The native look and feel is the current state of the art at LibreOffice (and Caolan changed the gtk3 appearance here). Different approaches like in this proposal [1] bring us away from the VCL plugins to something Mozilla-like with themes perhaps. Would be great though is very unlikely. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/PropertyDialog
Caolán McNamara committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "libreoffice-6-2": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/+/da6ec7f3274650dfdf047ba8d42291ddc5161858%5E%21 Related: tdf#120371 a scheme to provide multi-level notebook tabs It will be available in 6.2.0.1. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.