FORMATTING: Allow to assign Layouts to Master Slides, effectively creati

Subject: FORMATTING: Allow to assign Layouts to Master Slides, effectively creating a new "Master Slide+Layout combination" for presentations in LibreOffice Impress

Hello,

Problem presentation and outlining of problem:

In LibreOffice Impress there is an issue, reported in bug https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62332 and https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147797 :

Regardless of layout, when selecting Candy in Master Slides, the background is always the one from Title layout of Candy template

In Impress when selecting a Master Slide, it does not take into account the slide layout.
If I have multiple slides with different layouts and I select a different master slide, it does not adopt the template type for its layout type.

Steps to reproduce:
1 - Open Impress, do not select any template in dialog box,
2 - Create new slides with different layouts ("Title", "Title, Content", "Title and 2 content", etc),
3 - Go to Master Slides in Sidebar and select an "Available for use" Master slide.

Expected behaviour:
Selected Master slide will take layout of slide into account. Example: "Title, content" layout will adopt "Title, content" layout from select Master slide template.

Observed behaviour:
Regardless of slide Layout, implemented Master Slide is always "Title" layout of selected template.
When selecting a different Master Slide to a slide with a layout other than "Title" layout, the background of the slide should NOT be the same as "Title" layout but adopt a different one.

That is the behaviour in other office suites.

Details of the issue and pointing towards OASIS:

In this bug report Regina Henschel offered the following feedback:

The "Slide Layout" in the UI determines placeholders for Title, Subtitle and Outlines, for example. Such are represented as element <presentation:placeholder> in ODF. These placeholder elements are bundled in an container element <style:presentation-page-layout>.

The page itself has an attribute presentation:presentation-page-layout-name to refer to an element <style:presentation-page-layout>. And the page itself has an attribute draw:master-page-name to refer to an element <style:master-page>. But a master-page has no way to contain information about a presentation-page-layout. Only the single page connects master-page and presentation-page-layout.

Although we can do nothing in the file source we could provide a better UI.

You can base a new document on a template. But then you get all the other parts like pre-filled text objects as in case of template "Candy".

The sidebar offers "available" templates, but that gives only the first master-page of the chosen template.

The dialog "Load Master Slide" fetches all master-pages of the chosen template and shows them in the dialog "Available Master Slides". But then you can select only the one for the current slide. For another slide you need to go the way Slide > Change Slide Master > Load > Select Category > Select Template > OK > Select master-page > OK again.

The UI misses an option to load all master-pages of an template or document at once and provide them for later use in the presentation.

I can image to change the sidebar/toolbars/menues in this way:
The section "Available for Use" or a new section contains a collection of master pages, not of template-thumbnails. You could provide the presentation name in addition to the slide name in the tooltip.
There is an option to load all master-pages from a template or from an existing document.
There is an option to enable the user to select, which master-pages are stored in the document, even if they are not yet used. Presentations are often created in several sessions and there should be no need to fetch master-pages again and again.
There is an option to enable the user to remove a master-page from the document, if the user no longer needs it.

Followed by:

> Steps to reproduce:
> 1 - Open Impress, do not select any template in dialog box,
> 2 - Create new slides with different layouts ("Title", "Title, Content",
> "Title and 2 content", etc),
> 3 - Go to Master Slides in Sidebar and select an "Available for use" Master
> slide.
> 
> Expected behaviour:
> Selected Master slide will take layout of slide into account. Example:
> "Title, content" layout will adopt "Title, content" layout from select
> Master slide template.
> 

That is  not possible, because the layout ("Title", "Title, Content", "Title and 2 content", etc) is not part of a master slide. A master slide has no information about a layout.

Changing this would not only require changes in core but in the ODF standard too.

However, UI improvements are possible (see my comment 15).

I then asked her how to ask for changes to .odf to support this feature, since every other Office suite, including Office suites that support .odf like Microsoft Office, Softmaker Office and OnlyOffice seemingly offer this feature. I was directed to offer feedback to you.

Request to OASIS to address this issue:

Since this is something that has been asked for since 2013 at least (date of bug #62332) I would like to request support for allowing to assign Layouts to Master Slides, effectively creating a new "Master Slide+Layout combination" for presentations in Impressinstead of having solely the layout "Title, Content" for the Master Slide.

All the best,

Pedro Rosmaninho

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