GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 684450
size of a chart should not be linked to the width/height of the underlying cells
Last modified: 2015-03-31 13:41:52 UTC
Use case 1: You created a chart. You want to modify the width of the underlying column to, e.g., see more digits. => chart size is also modified. Use case 2: You created a chart. You want to copy the chart to another place to apply the same settings with different datasets. => chart size is modified. If there are use cases where chart size linked to cells size is useful, there should be at least an option in the chart properties for having a non-dependent chart size.
Not a bug, just a feature.
I understand this is a feature which might be useful in some circumstances. But for my use it is more annoying than useful, so an option would be welcome.
So if you have a chart from D5 to Z100, changing column width of E changes the absolute size of the chart. You would like an option that the size stays fixed. What if you change the size of column B. Currently that changes the position of the chart. Somebody would probably find it convenient to have the position fixed too. SO another option!? What this really means is that their is a case made for users to have a choice of where the sheet objects are anchored.(Currently both the top-left and bottom-right of a sheet object are anchored to their underlying cells.) As a consequence, if I get an existing sheet the various objects may behave quite differently. I would find this quite disturbing. I do note though that LibreOffice for example has an option to anchor a sheet object to the page or to the cells. Currently our objects behave like LO objects anchored to the cells. You seem to be looking for the possibility of anchoring them to the page, ie. no cell changes affect the objects size or position.
But then imagine that a chart is anchored to Sheet1 and that you want to copy it to Sheet2. If the chart is originally at DA:10000, it will be copied at the same place in Sheet2. If Sheet2 is empty, it may not be what you wanted to do... So indeed I think we need to options for the anchoring, one for the position and one for the size.
When you paste, move or resize a chart the anchors are automatically changed. I would be greatly against adding "options for the anchoring, one for the position and one for the size" since it would create very surprising and inconsistent behaviour. I am not even sure I like LO's distinction between page and cells. At the moment I would vote for WONTFIX.
Which inconsistent behaviours? Maybe such behaviours would happen if we anchor the position to the page and the size to the cell. But this case can be disabled. For publication-ready charts, you really don't want to modify the size because it messes the elements inside. Some sort of protection is necessary in my opinion.
I was referring to the inconsistent behaviour between sheet objects as they currently behave (ie anchored to two cells) and any one that are set to behave differently.
We actually support sheet objects with fixed sizes. Just there are not so many for now (just components).
I agree that when you copy-and-paste a chart, the anchors are automatically-changed ... but they are not changed correctly. More often than not, the pasted chart winds up in some crazy place with some crazy geometry. This is not just a question of taste; there are real bugs here. I also agree with the reporter that having the chart size change when some background column-width changes is annoying. It is doubly so because there are so many things that can cause a column to spontaneously change width. I have never in my life wanted a chart to track the column widths. The chart is the chart. The cells are the cells. I see no logic to connecting them, ever.
This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Once that release is available, you may want to check for a software upgrade provided by your Linux distribution.