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Suggestion about dialog tab pages and checkboxes

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 7:29 pm
by ElFlamencoLoco
At this moment, I'm using OO 4.1.5 with Windows 10 (Dutch, my native language).

In order to automate some settings in Writer, Calc (or any other OO application) I use a serie of small scripts (PowerShell and VB) sending keystrokes to the OO application. This keystrokes open the correct dialog box and change some values. This approach is rather simple to program and in most cases gives good results.

However, there are some limitations with tab pages and checkboxes! I'll treat them each separately.

Tab pages
Selecting a tab page by keyboard is not as straightforward as one might think. Opening a dialog, the active tab page is unknown. It might be the tab page that was active the last time the dialog box has been opened.
Activating the next tab page is done by CTRL-TAB. Reaching the last tab page, a next CTRL-TAB keystroke will activate the first tab page. SHIFT-CTRL-TABS moves the focus backwards, but reaching the first tab pages, the next SHIFT-CTRL-TAB keystrokes will activate the last tab page.
The actual problem: there is no way to make sure the first (or the last) tab page is active before sending the appropriate number of CTRL-TAB keystrokes in order to activate the desired tab page.
Suggested solution: implement a particular keystroke event (i.e. CTRL-HOME) in order to select the first tab page (and no other than the first one).

Checkboxes
Checkbox status can be changed by the SPACE keystroke.
The actual problem: there is no way to make sure whether the status is "on" (true) or "off" (false).
Suggested solution: implement a particular keystroke event (i.e. CTRL-SPACE) that turns the status always "on" (true). To make sure a checkbox will be switched "off" (false), only 2 keystrokes are needed: i.e. CTRL-SPACE (to switch it "on"), and then SPACE (to change the status, which now becomes "off").