GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 641355
tooltips obscure labels of columns
Last modified: 2011-02-13 18:22:45 UTC
When I enter a formula, a tooltip window appears describing the order of arguments. But when I go to fill in an argument, I need to know the column index and the tooltip is covering up the column's label! Possible fixes: 1) have the tooltip appear above the formula entry window (and obscure font controls and other things you don't need while entering a formula) 2) have a box just for tooltips (but this would take up screen realestate when not being used) 3) have a button to collapse/expand tooltips so that I can hide them selectively when I need to read the label under the balloon. 4) ? some place else For the moment, I've had to disable them. They're useful - i'd rather have them on - but they kept getting in the way.
1) On most screens there may not be sufficient space abvoe the formula bar. 2) "this would take up screen realestate when not being used" 3) this would make them even larger... 4) they need to be where you see them while you are looking at what you are typing. A) As you know you can turn them off. B) If the cells you want to refer to you can just click on them to enter their address, no need to see the headers. If the cell is not on screen the headers wouldn't help anyways. I would say this is a WONTFIX.
Of course we hide the tooltip when we temporarily switch windows so we could use some key combination to temporarily hide the tooltip. We might want to overload F4 for that purpose. (F4 is used to switch addressing mode after a reference is netered but is unused before.)
As to "click on a cell" rather than enter their address, the tooltips can be large enough to obscure the top row of cells. Also, I'm a typer; touching the mouse is slow. As to #3, having a button/keycombo+notice to selectively hide the tooltip balloon: yes, it would make the balloon larger. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I would love it if it had one extra line at the bottom that says "\t F4 to hide/restore tooltips". It would still be okay if there was a key that did hide/restore and it wasn't listed in the balloon, but was listed on the preferences page where there is currently the checkbox to disable tooltips. Right now, I've had to disable them. It's a trade-off. Obviously, design is all about trade-offs, but I'm hoping this is one I won't have to make in the future. :)
This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.