Bug 74371

Summary: UI: Delay in pushing in/out toolbar on/off (toggle, Boolean) option buttons
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: dg1727 <dg1727>
Component: UIAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: UNCONFIRMED --- QA Contact:
Severity: minor    
Priority: medium    
Version: 4.1.4.2 release   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description dg1727 2014-02-02 12:19:31 UTC 
I noticed this on the Options toolbar in Draw.  

Some toolbar buttons are Boolean option selections that look "pushed in" when the option is enabled.  

Issue:  there is too much delay from when the user clicks the button to when the button toggles its status.  

This can cause the user to click the button several times rapidly, on the assumption that the first click may not have registered.  This can cause the button to toggle its state a couple of times after the user stops clicking; this can be further annoying.  

LibreOffice 4.1.4.2 on Ubuntu 13.04.  I'm using the "libreoffice/ppa" PPA from launchpad.net.
Comment 1 Dominique Boutry 2014-02-03 16:02:24 UTC 
Hi. Thank you for your report. It deals with the great subject of UI reactivity.

The facts are that :
- the modern "fat" softwares perform tons of calculations, UI updates, etc. at each user interaction,
- the reactivity depends on the power of PCs, their workload (multiple software running at the same time ; or CS architecture like CITRIX), and the design of the observed software (LibreOffice here).

A trade-off must be found between :
- a less multi-threaded design, wich ensure good synchronisation between all part of the software (UI and internal state, for instance), at the price of a slow reactive UI,
- a more multi-threaded design, which leads to complex bugs, often impossible to reproduce, due to the accepted desynchonisation (see bug 73829 comment 3).

In the current case, it is not very difficult to make the button toggling exactly at the time it is depressed, but an unavoidable calculation time is needed to set accordingly the internal state of the (rich, large) LibO software. Not all users have very powerful workstations.

Status kept to UNCONFIRMED, to get additionnal advices.

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