insert formula should have keyboard shortcut and toolbar icon and focus the formula text box automatically

[Sebastian Urban]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org

For many scientific writers OpenOffice.org Writer is the text processor of choice when they hack together a sheet of formulas quickly.

However at the moment the default configuration makes it necessary to open the Insert->Object->Formula menu to insert a formula. Even worse, after inserting one the formula text field is not focused and I have to click with the mouse (!) on it to focus it. After entering the formula there is no obvious way to leave the textbox, so I have to use the mouse again.

This heavily interrupts workflow when entering text with many formulas.

Suggesstions:

1. Add keyboard shortcut for insert formula by default. (for example Ctrl+F)
2. Add toolbar icon for insert formula by default. (Perhaps replace "Data Sources" with it, I guess there a more people using formulas than there a people using data sources in their text documents.)
3. Automatically focus formula text box after inserting.
4. Provide easy and obvious way to leave formula text box by keyboard. (i. e. "Press Shift+Enter to return to your text document." in status bar)
5. Refresh rendered formula faster after user stopped typing (300 ms should be maximum delay!)

[Namain (namain)]

There is an autotext entry to insert a formula, but I agree with you that a keyboard hotkey would be better.
To use the autotext entry, type "fn" without the quotes into your document and hit "F3".
This will create a formula, inside of a table with a reference number. This does not allow you to convert text already typed into a formula though.

[p3tris (p3tris)]

you can assign a shortcut yourself.

[drew einhorn (drew-einhorn)]

The above suggestions provide only a partial solution to the problem.

Sometimes Namain's auto text suggestion is exactly what is needed. But sometimes I need to insert a formula fragment into the text. For example, I may need to explain what is represented by a given scalar, vector, tensor with an assortment of subscripts, superscripts, yadda, yadda, yadda, ... Sometimes I need to discuss an expression in equation (n) and how it is to be transformed yielding equation (n+1).

p3tris's suggestion to assign a shortcut myself is exactly what I was researching when I can across this bug report. I need to keep searching since I did not find any real help here. Openoffice needs to provide this capability and not force mathematics users to create their own variations on how to assign their own short cuts to constantly wading through the menus to create a document.

I completely disagree with Chris Cheney flagging this bug report as invalid, it may not be a high priority, but it does need to be addressed.

[drew einhorn (drew-einhorn)]

Okay! I found a workaround for entering formula fragments in the text without formula numbers:

"Alt-i o f" without quotes and spaces to enter the formula editor. "Esc Esc" without quotes and space to exit the formula editor and return to editing regular text. The second Esc deselects the formula (fragment) just entered. Otherwise the up and down arrows move the formula (fragment) up and down, rather than moving the text input cursor.

Have not yet found a way to edit an existing formula without using the mouse to double click on it.

How likely is it that the menus will change breaking "Alt-i o f"

[Sebastian Urban (surban)]

Of course the best solution would be to replace the formula editor with built-in formula support and define a keyboard shortcut to switch between WYSIWYG and LaTeX like mode. (like Word 2007)

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Can you please file this upstream bug at http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html and add the bug number back to this report?

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.