LibreOffice HackFest in Munich: Apply Style Combobox

The first day of the LibreOffice HackFest in Munich is nearly over, and I am happy to say that I've already achieved what I wanted to hack on:

This is how the "Apply Style" combo box looks like from now on - in LibreOffice 4.0, we will show previews of the styles directly in there, helping the users to choose the right style conveniently.

I can imagine some follow-up work, like being able to edit the style directly from the menu entry, instead of having to choose "More...", and editing from there; if you are interested to hack on this, I'll be glad to show you where :-) - just mail me.

LibreOffice Tutorial Videos

A user just asked on IRC how to print a serie of descriptions of photos, when he has a list in a spreadsheet. I answered that Mail Merge is what he is searching for - but he did not know what Mail Merge was. I found a very helpful video showing the mail merge in LibreOffice, so I want to share it with you :-)

[There is also a shortcut to Mail Merge when you understand the concept, try Tools -> Mail Merge Wizard..., of course.]

There are more LibreOffice videos out there, backed up by this nicely structured webpage. Might be worth watching the other videos too :-)

Improved Rulers

Recently I was able to spend a bit of time on the UI hacking again; and this time it was the "Rulers" in Writer. Thanks to Mirek M. (BTW, have you seen his Call for GSoC projects designs, and Call for Templates blog entries?) who provided me with a helpful mockup, I was able able to implement the new look quickly and effectively, mostly by removing code :-)

I hope I will be able to do more such changes before the 3.6 feature freeze; I'll keep you informed. And if anybody of you is interested in UI-related hacking, just mail me or ping me on the IRC (kendy on irc.freenode.net), and I'll provide you with code pointers to other interesting areas :-)