Bug 35077

@andréb:
That's you personal opinion that might be contrary to opinion of other users? for me that's an useful feature, so I can see what I selected for copy even when I moved cell cursor to the position where I want to paste. 

Can you contribute objective facts why the current behavior might be bad?

(In reply to comment #0)
> When a cell (or group of cells) is selected for copy (with ctrl-C), very
> annoying flashing lines surround the source cell(s).

I find that useful and so do many other users.

> Not being an adept of the "cult of the dancing dog" (aka microsoft), I would
> like to be able to NOT see the flashing lines.
> At least make it an option that can be turned off.

This is a place to report bugs, not a place to make cute remarks about your anti-MS feelings.

> 
> Without the flashing, the source cell(s) are surrounded by a heavy line, which
> lets the user know that the correct cells have be selected.  That is all that
> is necessary (or useful).

Wrong.  Once the cursor moves all the heavy line is gone.  That's not useful at all.

This is a vital part of Calc's feature, and this can't be turned off.

Option of stopping flashing lines or turning they off my be useful when working on small documents. Meanwhile we have two way to workaround this problem:
Press Esc imediately after Ctrl-C
Copy selected cells using drag and drop: begin drag selected cell and then press Ctrl before drop.

I doubt that that option ever will come, IMHO it would be something nearby no user will use, for most users that flashing line is a useful feature, see "Bug 36100 - EDITING : Edit > Cut also should show blinking border around cells".

@andréb:
If you believe that we are wrong you can add this enhancement request to the nonofficial Voting Page
<http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement>
But I believe it would be wasted time.

Changing title to better reflect my objectives, since I reported the issue.

From :
Add option to switch off flashing lines around copy source cell(s)

To :
Add an OPTION to switch off special effects, such as flashing lines around copy source cell(s)

Further points :

in response to comment 1 :
That I find flashing lines very annoying is just as objective as you finding flashing lines a useful feature.
Perhaps I should have said "very distracting".

in response to comment 2 :
Adding an OPTION to remove special effects such as flashing lines does not in any way prevent others from keeping this behavior

The reference to Microsoft was only to clarify my point of view.  Sorry if that offends you, but many users dislike that sort of glitz.

Once having verified that the correct cells have been selected (with the heavy outline), many users like myself do not need to be reminded that the correct cells have been selected.  We already know.

Flashing lines are not a "vital part" of calc.  Although some users may find it useful, for me (and probably many others) it is very distracting.  By the way, they to not stay flashing as long as the data is in the copy buffer.  Entering data in another cell will stop the flashing.  So you can't depend on the flashing.

(In reply to comment #5)

> Although some users may find it useful, for me (and probably many others) it is very distracting.

This sentence is meaningless.  We can easily swap the "some users" and "many others" to counter your personal opinion.

Anyway, there is zero chance we'll change this behavior.  I'll close it as WONTFIX.

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> 
> > Although some users may find it useful, for me (and probably many others) it is very distracting.
> 
> This sentence is meaningless.  We can easily swap the "some users" and "many
> others" to counter your personal opinion.

I fail to see how you can deny that I find it very distracting.  That is a simple fact.  Perhaps if the background flashed alternately red and blue, you might understand ?  For me it would not be much worse.
This is a request for an OPTION, not to deny your preferred behavior.

> Anyway, there is zero chance we'll change this behavior.  I'll close it as
> WONTFIX.

If you don't use spreadsheets, you probably haven't noticed the incoherent behavior of these flashing lines.

1) The flashing lines are deactivated by editing a cell, as well as by pushing escape.  But the selected cells remain in the copy buffer.
The flashing lines need not be on the visible in the current window.
So it is not a reliable indicator of the copy buffer contents.
Particularly if copying a larger group of cells.
And if just copying a few cells, it's utility is just marginal at best, assuming that one doesn't have a very short attention span.

2) Pushing escape to cancel can lead to accidently another key, causing more unnecessary delays.

3) The flashing lines remain flashing if the block being copied touches the title line (set under the window menu.)


So why is it not reasonable to want to deactivate this special effect ?
Just as useful (to me) as a dancing paper clip.  (Which Microsoft removed from their office suite, only to recently reintroduce it.  But for them, it is an _option_)

Could you as least indicate where I can find the offending code, so I can deal with it myself ?
And maybe submit a patch to add the option ?

Be my guest, but I have no interest in this.

And DO make sure that you get input from our ux folks. BTW let me just express strong disapproval of adding this option.

Anyway, good luck.

We need *less* options. Not more. Just my opinion.

If one really WANTS to show the selected bloc for copy, this function needs fixing.
If there were some manner to show the copy bloc without flashing, and all the anomolies, it probably wouldn't be a problem.
As it is, the flashing makes it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand, particularly in a big page with relatively small type.  It also sometimes distorts adjacent text, making it unreadable.
An option not to highlight text to be copied, or to switch off special effects,  seems an easy enough to understand.  There are already many obscure options.

Alternately, there could be an option for how to highlight the copy block.
Not at all being an evident choice (for myself), among others.
Maybe this approach would be more acceptable to everyone ?

As a OO calc programmer, I fully agree with andréb. The flashing lines surrounding the copied area of cells are very annoying.

Curious about the LO, I wanted to test my application which was created in OO calc. Users of may application don't need those lines, since various copy operations of cell blocks will be done with the help of macros. Limits of cell blocks should be determined only programmatically. No direct user interaction is allowed.

I hope, you correct the behaviour of LO and introduce an option to turn it off.

Don't add me please.  I'm not interested.

Nobody wants to make an option? OK.

Give me just a tip, how could I turn off those flashing lines from within a macro.

The "marching ants" animation that was added to Calc has several negative effects:

* We use X11 thin clients, so the animation generates additional, unnecessary, continuous network traffic.
* The animation creates additional CPU load and battery usage on portable devices.
* The animation is extremely distracting to some people (myself included).

I strongly support adding an option to let users turn this animation off.  I have polled my users and most seem to think that it serves no useful purpose.  There is no such animation when copying and pasting in Writer, for example (thank God).  When you copy Draw objects they don't flash or animate (thank God).

At a very minimum it should time out after X number of seconds, or allow the user to choose an animation rate.  But I think having an option to turn it off in Tools-> Options-> Calc -> View (or General) makes more sense.

I agree that this behaviour is annoying and inconsistent.  Every time I copy students test results I have to scroll my window as it is annoying.  The top remains even if I hit ESC, as it is next to the freeze window line, and the only way to clear it seems to be to scroll the window.  I also find that sometimes it starts to flash, but nothing has been copied (when I paste there is nothing there, or something from earlier).

It is simply incredibly annoying to me.

I would LOVE to have a way to disable the this animation completely.

I, personally, find the animation to be extremely distracting and completely pointless. 

That said, I can understand people wanting to have a choice, so I fully support an option to enable/disable the animation. People seem to be either neutral, weakly in favor of, or EXTREMELY opposed to the animation. Whatever the case, it is enough of an annoyance to warrant an option to disable it.

No change in LO 4.1.

We are still seeking an option to allow users to suppress the marching ants animation completely or to at least have it time out after X number of seconds.

My suggestion would be to place it under tools-> options-> view-> "Graphics Output" section as a checkbox for "UI animations" which would turn off any animations in all modules.  Or under the "Selection" section as a checkbox for "Selection animations"

(In reply to comment #18)
> We are still seeking an option to allow users to suppress the marching ants
> animation completely or ...

Good description :)

> 
> My suggestion would be to place it under tools-> options-> view-> "Graphics
> Output" section as a checkbox for "UI animations" which would turn off any
> animations in all modules.  Or under the "Selection" section as a checkbox
> for "Selection animations"

I'd go for the same page, "Selection" section,
 with a checkbox "Use animations"

On by default is not a problem as long as there is an option to AVOID the flashing.

@chtfn:

Could you please explain what your adding the word "VOTE" to the whiteboard means?  Thanks!

Hi Crxssi

It simply means that this bug is listed on the Vote for Enhancement page on the TDF wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement

Cheers

This was never confirmed by anyone on QA team or developer side - in fact, the most involved developers heavily disfavor this idea. That being said - REOPENED is incorrect. Moving to UNCONFIRMED and asking for UX input (as was originally requested by Kohei but no one took the time to do that).

Please stop messing with the severity/priority for your pet bugs....it doesn't help anyone.

Removing VOTE as it's meaningless and not used by anyone, not looked at by any developers, and has no impact on the project.

(In reply to Joel Madero from comment #22)
> This was never confirmed by anyone on QA team or developer side - in fact,

This problem was confirmed by numerous users.  It is disingenuous at best to say that it is not confirmed.

> the most involved developers heavily disfavor this idea. That being said -

Just because developers aren't interested does not mean that users do not find it an important problem - as the comments clearly show.  (You did bother to read them, didn't you ?)
Note also that these same developers confirmed the behavior in question.  (One with the audacity to call the annoying behavior it a "vital part" of calc.)

> REOPENED is incorrect. Moving to UNCONFIRMED and asking for UX input (as was
> originally requested by Kohei but no one took the time to do that).
> 
> Please stop messing with the severity/priority for your pet bugs....it
> doesn't help anyone.

By calling it unconfirmed, you are messing inappropriately with the bug report.
Correcting the status to "new".