https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=120897

--- Comment #41 from Eyal Rozenberg <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #39)

I'll (try) to keep the material discussion on the mailing list where it's
started, but - I believe it's worthwhile to trace the parallels between this
case and that of the active cell rectangle affair.

Yes, it seems that in both of these efforts, developers received what seemed
like clear guidance. But in both cases, the guidance was a misrepresentation,
even if an unintended one. We've discussed how that was the case in this bug;
and it seems to have been the case with the active-cell-rectangle efforts:
Rafael was led to believe everyone was on board with a wide rectangle outside
the cell boundaries, although the bug prompting the rectangle revamp did not
ask for that to happen, and in fact asked for something else (an Excel-like
rectangle). The result was a major degradation of LO Calc's UI, that had to be
fixed.

> Please stop pestering the devs who are willing to make improvements and are
> willing to work with the user community to refine their submissions IFF
> needed. That can't be done when we don't have their code to review and test.

Actually, the lesson to learn is for us to please stop trying to manufacture
artificial clarity and definitiveness for developers who work on UI issues -
especially for UI aspect which are highly visible to most users most of the
time. We should not frustrate them with a belief that "the community has
spoken", and now they just need to implement things in some fashion - when that
is not the case. False expectations lead to surprising frustration.

Moreover, there is the slippery slope: When that code is submitted for review,
it may well be accepted - since the review does not typically ensure that the
UI change is really sound and widely acceptable; and after the review, the
problem becomes much more difficult to fix, in the political sense: A backout
was not considered an acceptable option; so we had to wait for an improvement
on the original state of affairs.

> You claim to understand and interpret the Design-UX process, yet you
> demonstrate inability to work within constraints of the development process.
> Design and UX-feedback does not drive the development effort.

LibreOffice is a user-facing application, for which reason design and UX inputs
and feedback drive a significant part of the development effort.

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