Bug 87787

Summary:	Improve cell border assignment
Product:	LibreOffice	Reporter:	Jay Philips <philipz85>
Component:	ux-advise	Assignee:	Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	cno, libreoffice-ux-advise, stgohi-lobugs
Version:	Inherited From OOo
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Jay Philips 2014-12-28 10:29:48 UTC

Not sure if this should be considered a bug or an enhancement, bug setting cell borders in writer and calc are a major pain because cells that share the same border visually can have different border settings and these border dont play nicely together.

For writer, if you insert a table of 3x3, and in cell B2 you set the borders to none, the left and bottom borders show as transparent but not the top and right. I'm assuming the way the cells are being draw to make up the table maybe causing it to look like this, as unfortunately there isnt a means for me to open up the cell properties and see exactly what is going on. In order to achieve what is intended, a user will likely have to jump through many hoops to get the way it should be.

For calc, select a number of cells (e.g. C7:F16), and set their inner and outer borders, then select one of the cells (e.g. E12) in the changed cells and set its borders to none. You wont visually see a difference because the cells around it all have their borders on. So in order to achieve what is intended, a user will have to go to each of the 4 cells around it, open up the formatting cell dialog and disable the related sides.

So the simple solution is that when a cell border is set or unset in any manner (border width, style, color, etc), that its neighboring cells must also be set or unset in the same way.

Comment 1 A (Andy) 2014-12-28 18:17:26 UTC

(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #0)
> Not sure if this should be considered a bug or an enhancement, bug setting
> cell borders in writer and calc are a major pain because cells that share
> the same border visually can have different border settings and these border
> dont play nicely together.
> 
> For writer, if you insert a table of 3x3, and in cell B2 you set the borders
> to none, the left and bottom borders show as transparent but not the top and
> right. I'm assuming the way the cells are being draw to make up the table
> maybe causing it to look like this, as unfortunately there isnt a means for
> me to open up the cell properties and see exactly what is going on. In order
> to achieve what is intended, a user will likely have to jump through many
> hoops to get the way it should be.

Strange and interesting.  I did not recognized it before in WRITER.  But for me this is inconsistent and a buggy behaviour, because I see no reason for it.  

> For calc, select a number of cells (e.g. C7:F16), and set their inner and
> outer borders, then select one of the cells (e.g. E12) in the changed cells
> and set its borders to none. You wont visually see a difference because the
> cells around it all have their borders on. So in order to achieve what is
> intended, a user will have to go to each of the 4 cells around it, open up
> the formatting cell dialog and disable the related sides.

This is for me also inconsistent and a buggy behaviour, because I can't see any reason yet.  Maybe anybody else has a good explanation?  For me as a normal user this is buggy and annoying.  It is inconsistent for me, because inside a table I have borders to distinct between cells.  If I want to change it, why do I have to change it from "both" sides?  And in CALC I have also similar effect as in WRITER.  If I set in a number of cells inner and outer borders and then select only one cell within them and change the colour of the total outer border it gets only changed at the top and on the left.
 
> So the simple solution is that when a cell border is set or unset in any
> manner (border width, style, color, etc), that its neighboring cells must
> also be set or unset in the same way.

I would agree.  At least I don't have any idea yet, why it should not.
Maybe anybody else has also any further thoughts about these issues?


@Markus: Can you maybe also help with this issue?  Do you have an explanation?  What are thoughts about it?

Comment 2 Markus Mohrhard 2014-12-28 18:39:05 UTC

I won't touch any border code anymore.

This is an enhancement but one that will at least on the calc side never be implemented.

Comment 3 A (Andy) 2014-12-28 18:52:44 UTC

(In reply to Markus Mohrhard from comment #2)
> I won't touch any border code anymore.
> 
> This is an enhancement but one that will at least on the calc side never be
> implemented.

Thanks for your very fast reply.  But I hope you are wrong with the second part in your last sentence ;-)

Comment 4 Cor Nouws 2014-12-28 19:50:32 UTC

(In reply to Jay Philips from comment #0)

> So the simple solution is that when a cell border is set or unset in any
> manner (border width, style, color, etc), that its neighboring cells must
> also be set or unset in the same way.

I agree that it's inconvenient, but one can also think of use cases where it's handy that setting all borders of one cell does not affect those of the adjacent ones.
This maybe eases the pain some may feel by Markus respons.
(I've seen from a distance the pain various developers had to get borders work as well as possible and improve interoperability too...)

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