https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153899
--- Comment #16 from Eyal Rozenberg <eyalr...@gmx.com> --- (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #15) > It depends on how you merge cells. It cannot depend on how the cells were originally merged; because the choices you mention are possible actions, not choices between different kinds of merged-state. The merged state is - AFAIK and correct me if I'm wrong - made up of only the set of cells the current cell is merged into. So, once the cell is merged - LO has no information regarding how the user chose to merge it. It will have some implicit information via whether or not the cells other than the first have any contents. Are you saying that this information is taken into consideration? > we apply the format as done for hidden > columns/rows: if the surrounding cells are selected it applies to the hidden > too. Select the cell left or right of the merged cells and apply the direct > formatting to see the difference. Ah, now that's an interesting point! The minutes did not mention that. Was this discussed? Anyway, here I disagree that this should be the behavior. Why? Because the principle should be taking hints of the user's intent from their action. If clone-formatting is applied to a certain cell, with the cell next to it being hidden - the user has given no indication that they are interested in formatting the adjacent hidden cell. But in the case of selecting a merged cell as the target of clone-formatting, the user _does_ indicate they want that area to be formatted a certain way. Even if we're breaking up the cell - which is not obviously what the user wants, but let's say it's kind of acceptable - we can't go yet another step in countermanding their expressed intent, and only apply formatting to the first of the unmerged cells. > [1] The merge option dialog shows up when the cells contain content. See > also https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/scalc/01/05060000.html This brings up an interesting possibility which we have not discussed. Why does that dialog exist? Because we could not reconcile different and contradictory possible user intents when merging a cell. We (must have) identified at least two common intents, and perhaps added another possibility - and since we couldn't always choose one over the other, we opted for the cumbersome and flow-interrupting behavior of opening up a dialog. Perhaps we need to do the same thing here? If you ask me, I would be willing to assume the intent of not breaking up the cell at all; or of breaking up and formatting all broken up cells - but I absolutely am not willing to accept the assumption of the user wanting to break up the cells and formatting just one of them. That seems to me like the more esoteric use case. But if you or others believe that this is a common intent - we could instead bring up a dialog, and offer several options: * Keep merged cell, apply formatting other than merge state * Break cells up, format all of them * Break cells up, format the first What do you think? -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
