Poll about design preview for dropdown controls

Update (March 2023): This survey is closed. Results are available on our bugtracker. The post below is still available to read but links to the survey have been removed.

One of the tasks for the design team is to evaluate enhancement requests on our bugtracker. Most are definitely valuable and improve LibreOffice but sometimes we have to balance effort against benefit. We also have to take into account that a function or option for a few users might be adverse to many others, for example by bloating the options dialog. And we are not always sure what decision is the best and have to ask the community. So here is a poll about switching the design preview (font is listed as shown in the document, styles are (mostly) shown as they will appear in the document) into a plain dropdown (pure text without any preview).

Request

The request was filed in ticket tdf#62926. You can disable the preview of fonts in the toolbar control by unchecking Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View with the option “Show preview of fonts”. The plain text saves space, makes the list easier to read, and requires less resources. The idea is to also switch off the preview of styles in the dropdown right of it.

Figure 1: Both dropdown using the design preview.

Possible solutions

While we could easily introduce an option “[x] Show preview of styles” it has some drawbacks, besides bloating the options dialog. The font name list is present on all modules while paragraph styles are relevant in Writer only. That means we actually have to put the new options into Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Writer > View, far away from its sibling. If we place the option at the same general page, it would be there also in other modules such as Calc and Impress where paragraph style doesn’t matter.

We discussed the alternative to rename the existing option to “[x] Use design preview” (or the like) and combine the two places (and all other that might be in the UI) under the same option. But then we lose the capability to toggle the preview individually (if that would be needed by anyone) and furthermore it’s not clear how to deal with the similar option at the styles sidebar.

Poll

Admittedly, this is one of our least issues but we take every input serious. And we trust the wisdom of the community and want to ask you to respond to the survey.

We are also curious if and how the current option is used. Your comment is very welcome.