Customizing LO Writer toolbars on Macbook Pro

English
#1

Hi, New LO user here, trying to set up Writer for a 90-year-old who doesn’t need all of the functions of a word-processor and would prefer that the display on his 13” 2020 MacBook Pro (OS Ventura 13.2.1) is set at the largest size for easy visibility. This setting means that the toolbar space in the Writer screen can’t accommodate all of the default icons but, via the Customize dialog, I’ve culled the visible icons in the Standard toolbar to something that fits the available screen space and is close to suiting his needs, albeit a bit spartan.

Because it would be nice to include a few extra functions, and because he’s familiar with MS Word, I’ve been trying—without any success—to set up either the Tabbed or Compact Tabbed UIs. No doubt it’s is due in part to the Macbook display setting but LO looks a bit messy in these UIs. Leaving aside an odd space between the icon bar and the tabs themselves, the space for toolbar icons is only partly filled for most of the tabs, and in the case of Home for the Tabbed UI and Layout for the Compact UI, it’s completely empty. I’ve worked out how to get icons back into this space manually but that’s not the point. I’m now attempting to switch off visible icons in the Tabbed and Compact Tabbed toolbars via the Notebookbar tab in Customize but they’re not budging. I don’t think this is a ‘Mac thing’ because I was able to customise the Standard toolbar. Suggestions welcome. Thanks

#2

“a bit messy” is probably an understatement. I seem to recall that the tabbed and compact toolbar UIs are an approximation of space constraints, which rely on the layout configuration chosen by the original implementation, and which have never really been macOS “adapted” . In other words, as soon as you start trying to take things out of those pre-configured toolbars and replacing them with others, assuming that is even possible (from your post, it would appear not to be for some of the elements), you’re quickly going to encounter display glitches such as spacing issues, overlapping UI elements, etc.

Hopefully, I am wrong, but I don’t believe that that flexibility exists whilst keeping the layout looking half decent.

#3

Thanks. My perhaps simplistic thinking was that if I could reduce the number of visible icons under each tab (to address the space issue), one of those UIs might look respectable. But no amount of unchecking/checking boxes in the Notebookbar (via a Macbook Pro) changes the visible icons under tabs in those UIs. That experience and your response suggests it is some sort of Mac thing and I shouldn’t waste more time on these UIs. Pity.

#4

I’ve just found this previous thread which seems to relate to modifications of the Tabbed UI:

#5

There was also this bug:

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153793

which has only recently been fixed.

#6

Thanks, I’ll check these out.
After your original comment I was imagining that it might not be worth reporting the bug but perhaps I should…

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