Tab Key - No Contextual Behavior?

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#21

and so of course LibreOffice should make its style-using users suffer.

No. If there were an option in the preferences, i.e. “Use MSO Tabs Behavior,” or “Use LO Styles Only,” which is not enbled by default, it would not make anyone “suffer,” as you insist, unless they explicitly choose it is what they prefer, seek out the option, & enable it.

Not everyone on the planet thinks the same. You have decided that LO’s approach, whereby TAB cannot be used as in all other software, is better. That’s great, more power to you. You have a better approach. But to continue to insist that every other software in the world is wrong and therefore everyone must learn your way of doing it honestly just comes off as arrogant. Your way may well be better. I’m not arguing that, which is what you guys seem not to get. But since every other software doesn’t do it that way, there may still be of millions of people who simply prefer consistency of behavior over your “better way” of doing it.

#22

Any option has a cost. A cost of labor of volunteers implementing that, and then of volunteers supporting that. A feature to make someone happy, on the expense of someone who should “simply enable” something. But when you talk about optional behavior - no problem if someone wants to jump in and implement it - but obviously that someone should be the one who needs that. I myself will not. But also will not block your (or anyone else’s) contribution if it comes optional.

#23

“In LO Writer, Tab never increases indent.”
This is beyond brilliant, in a Monty Python way.
While the entire world has used TAB in only one way, as the OP has described, some dull and bored developer(s) decided to do away with it. Why? because it makes for a more frustrating experience.
I just stumbled upon this problem myself, and the way it is implemented is mind-boggling: at first the TAB works, but as soon as the newline (Enter) is pressed, the indent is removed.
Using styles when all I am trying to do is type up a quick shopping list or a reminder, is beyond dumb. It would be akin to taking a jumbo jet to your local 7-11 store.
I will not be using M$ office, but Libre Office has unfortunately fallen into wrong hands it seems. Instead of its creators thinking “How do we do better job than all others in making this the most powerful AND user-friendly text editor?” they are trying to compete with M$ in how dumb their program is.
OK, I will try a little more, but I have barely started (again) using LO Writer and already hate the philosophy of their developers which this example perfectly illustrates: “To hell with user experience!”.
I have to say that in decades of writing software and using other people’s software (much more complex than LO), I have never seen anything this dumb.
I am tempted to believe that M$ has their people working on making LO user-unfriendly. is that possible? I t seems to be the only logical explanation.
All in all, Lo is for masochists who don’t mind having to re-learn how to type. Unbelievable.
Why not make LO Writer use DVORAK keyboard layout? That should confuse even more users… (Just an idea)

#24

On this board, answers are reserved for solutions, not for rants or debate or even discussion. For that kind of thing, go to a real forum.

#25

There are those people who try to seem as if they know something, but then can’t describe their problems sufficiently (mentioning the “at first the TAB works, but as soon as the newline (Enter) is pressed, the indent is removed”, it would be obvious to any reasonable person that that is something different from what was discussed here, and needs describing), nor do they know how people usually behave…

#26

While this rant is obviously not the ideal way to encourage change, for what it’s worth, I do agree with the premise. To me it seems like such a simple thing to at least have the option, so that users of literally any other editor out there can more easily & seamlessly take advantage of LO (whether that means migrating fully from other editors, or going back and forth between them). After leaving Windows for Linux I thought it was going to be given that LO would be my Office replacement, but I ended up using WPS Office (which I don’t think is as good of a product) solely because of this behavior. I too have difficulty understanding why there’s such an insistence of “we frown upon doing it the way that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of PC users are familiar - you must re-learn a different way just for this software.” Sure, having an alternative approach is great. But when everyone else does it a different way…no option at least?

#27

While the entire world has used TAB in
only one way, as the OP has described,
some dull and bored developer(s)
decided to do away with it. Why?

The TAB (Tabulator) and the Indent was two basicly different tools in the in printing technology, on the typewriters, and they are different things in the modern editor softwares too.

The most efficient way to format a document in the LibreOffice: the usage of the styles - instead of the manual (direct) formatting methods. ((The manual formatting is for the ex-MSO users, because they are not familiar with the Styles.))

#28

Per the OP, it’s not just MSO - it’s the behavior of virtually every other text editor. MSO, Google Docs, WPS Office, SoftMaker Office, VS Code, even basic Linux text editors like KWrite. It’s one way for LO, another way for every other editor out there, which makes it needlessly cumbersome when moving back & forth. It’s far more seamless to just use the same approach for everything, rather than have one single outlier.

#29

VS Code

Could you elaborate please? Also the mention of “nano” (by another person) looks hilarious in this context.

#30

Per the OP. If you select a bunch of text in VS and press tab, it moves all the selected text to the right (and to the left if you press shift+tab). If I select text in LO and press Tab, it deletes it all & replaces it with a tab character.

#31

Ah, ok, You were talking about two different things (increasing indent vs not removing selection); and here you only talk about the latter one. Ok.

#32

It’s the 2nd bullet in my original post.

#33

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