Bug 39548

Summary:	ACCESSIBILITY: Uncheck 'Allow row to break across pages and columns' by default (accessibility)
Product:	LibreOffice	Reporter:	Christophe Strobbe <c_strobbe-fdo>
Component:	ux-advise	Assignee:	Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	libreoffice-ux-advise, sasha.libreoffice, serval2412, sleeping.pillow, s.mehrbrodt, vstuart.foote
Version:	3.5.0 RC1
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Bug Depends on:
Bug Blocks:	60251

Description Christophe Strobbe 2011-07-26 04:07:25 UTC

When a table is inserted in Writer, the checkbox 'Allow row to break across pages and columns' is checked by default. When a row contains a page break, part of the row will be on the first page, and the rest will be on the next page. This is confusing for blind users with a screen reader, because the row will be presented as two separate rows. When creating accessible documents, this checkbox needs to be unchecked for every single table, which is a lot of work when you need to make other people's documents accessible.

Steps to reproduce the issue:
1. In a Writer document, go to Table -> Insert Table, and insert a table.
2. With the cursor still inside the table, go to Table -> Table properties -> Text Flow tab; the checkbox 'Allow row to break across pages and columns' is checked, so uncheck it.

There is no workaround for this issue. I think the vast majority of tables don't need this option anyway (because they are relatively small and simple), so unchecking it creates no negative side effects for the majority of authors.

Comment 1 Tom 2011-07-30 06:33:05 UTC

Hi :)
Again i think this is an Accessibility issue.  Christophe Strobe's bug reports are often likely to be about Accessibility issues so although there is not an official tag it might help to search using his name as a parameter.
Regards from
Tom :)

Comment 2 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 12:26:31 UTC

[This is an automated message.]
This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it
started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is
changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back
to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases.
Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1

more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html

Comment 3 Christophe Strobbe 2012-01-27 03:54:45 UTC

Version info was previously unspecified. I confirm that this 'bug' still applies to LibreOffice 3.5.0 RC1: the checkbox 'Allow row to break across pages and columns' is checked by default (= on newly created tables). Changing the status from NEEDINFO to NEW.

Comment 4 sasha.libreoffice 2012-01-30 03:54:44 UTC

reproduced in LibO 3.6.0 master on Fedora 64 bit
I agree that it is important

Comment 5 Matthieu 2013-09-16 14:59:09 UTC

Hello,

I know it's an old bug, but I need also to have tis option uncheck.

Can you tell me where (in the code) I can do this?

Thank you very much.

Comment 6 Julien Nabet 2014-11-11 22:02:35 UTC

On pc Debian x86-64 with master sources updated yesterday, I could still reproduce this.
A code pointer to start:
http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/sw/source/ui/table/tabledlg.cxx#1475

Comment 7 Julien Nabet 2014-11-11 22:09:17 UTC

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/12371/
Waiting for feedback from devs because it may have some impacts on different locations.

Comment 8 Julien Nabet 2014-11-12 06:41:30 UTC

Niklas/ux team: I submitted a patch for review but thought meanwhile you might be interested in this one. I'd just like to know if this tracker is ok for you or if you thought about wrong side effect.

Comment 9 Niklas Johansson 2014-11-12 10:38:49 UTC

I'd say that the main side effect will be for people (ab)using tables for layout. If you have a cell that contains lets say 10 lines and the whole cell suddenly gets moved to the next page, this will likely make quite a few persons frustrated, wondering what happened.

Before changing this I would strongly suggest that we add the option to the dialog that is shown when pressing Ctrl + F12. When testing this issue I noticed that the split button was changed into a drop down button which hides these options even more. On the other hand I'm not to found of split buttons so ...

Btw. have a look at Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice Writer -> Table. It would be great to have the default setting set-able there. Wishful thinking from my side, possibly horrifying for some of the UX-people. ;)  

I will however add that this is a setting that I pretty much always change, along with ticking in that the first row should be considered a heading row that should be repeated if broken across a page break. This is not only for accessibility reasons but because I want the data in the cells to be kept together.

Summary:
I'd be careful changing this behavior, at least until we have a check box in the options dialog and the insert table dialog.

Comment 10 Julien Nabet 2014-11-12 11:13:01 UTC

Thank you Niklas for your feedback.
Badfully, I never changed a dialog after ui conversion and don't know anything about Glade. So if this change is required, I couldn't help here :-(


Samuel: put you on cc because you might too be interested in this one and I don't think you're on ux team (perhaps I'm wrong).

Comment 11 Julien Nabet 2014-11-12 21:45:29 UTC

Unassign myself since I won't be able to do the job here.

I abandonned the patch which was in gerrit review (see comment7).

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