Re: Conditional Formatting in OOo Calc

Mark,

>>> This is great, a shame you can't keep stacking conditions.
>>
>> What do you mean by "stacking conditions"?
>>
>> ?condition formatting has a limit of three format choices
>> ?condition being computed, eg pass/fail/null has a result set where n>3
>> ?condition being computed has more than three clauses/more than two
>> AND or OR conjunctions
>> ?...
>>
>> There may be a way...
>
> Oh i'm sure there is, but the UI is less than intuitive if that's the case.

=agreed.

=the limit seems arbitrary and reminds me very much of FORTRAN's trio 
(negative, zero, positive). It's sad that the OOo ppl didn't look at the 
likes of Thunderbird's message search which visibly ends with an 'add 
another clause' (+) button, and thus multiplies the number of conditions 
that may be applied. (although presumably there is a limit...)


> Say I want to have different colours for the words 'yes, no, maybe,
> other'.  That's 4 sets of conditions.

=at the risk of teaching grandma...
(not that I'm calling you an old woman...
dig, dig, dig - hole increasing in depth...)

=I've also been hassled by users demanding this sort of stuff (grumble, 
  "... users ...", mutter "...OOCalc...", hiss, spit...)

=a solution might be to format the worksheet to have two columns: the 
first which color-codes the important results, eg yes/no, and the second 
which handles the secondary significance(s).

=further to this, if the coloring is of the font of the information 
presented, eg 'pass', 'fail'... (will not work for background or outline 
color) it is possible to set the two* adjacent column widths to half of 
the width of your widest highlighted-word data, eg 'maybe' is the most 
verbose of your examples (above). Of the two, set the left column to be 
justified-left, and the right column justified-right. Now, as long as 
the field in the 'other column' contains null, the justification will 
cause the populated field to expand into/over its empty neighbor. Thus 
the two worksheet columns give you 2x3 conditions to play-with but the 
results appear to be one (column) to the human eye...

* assumed to be two columns, could relatively easily be three 
(justify-center) and thus nine distinct condition-results but would 
start to become rather ungainly thereafter...

=such solutions need to look at the UX very carefully! If the user is 
likely to print then block-color backgrounds are not printer-friendly. 
Maybe consider using (thick) colored outlines?

=Use of color carries inherent (UX) risk in the prevalence of 
color-blindness...

=Also, in a long list (regardless of media) where the pertinent data is 
some (horizontal) distance from the name (primary data field) - and 
particularly if there are intermediate columns which are substantially 
blank, it can be difficult for the eye to distinguish between narrow 
columns and between the rows...
(?bring back lineflow stationery!)


=I'm assuming that there is a fair volume of information/lines to 
present and thus the color-coding is to assist the reader's eye to 
pick-out specific exceptions or to gain an impression of a trend. So 
another solution may be to become more database-y about the presentation 
of information and invite the user to select which category of results 
interests him/her and filter accordingly - no color-coding required 
because 'this list' of results is all students 'of the same stripe or 
color'.

-- 
Regards,
=dn

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