The Insert tab gains Button, Slider and Spin Button beside Cell
Controls › Checkbox, which is unchanged. Each arms placement: a drag on
the grid draws the control at that size (a tall drag makes a vertical
slider), a click places it at its default size, and Escape disarms. Key
tips (N B U, N S L, N S B) place one at the active cell. A new button
opens Assign Action, as Excel opens Assign Macro.
form_controls.rs draws the controls in the sheet tokens, so they look
the same in both themes: buttons with hover and pressed states, sliders
with a track, a filled part and a thumb (and the value beside the thumb
while it is dragged), spin buttons with two arrows, stacked or side by
side. A plain click works a control: dragging the thumb, clicking the
track (a page), clicking or holding an arrow (it repeats after 0.4 s),
pressing a button (it runs on release over it). A drag or a hold is one
undo step. The control last worked takes the arrows, Page Up and Page
Down, Home and End, and Space or Enter for a button. Ctrl or Cmd+click
or a right-click selects a control to move or resize it; a right-click
opens the object menu, which for a control adds Edit Text and Assign
Action (buttons) and Format Control before Delete.
Double-clicking a selected control opens its editor. On a right-to-left
sheet a control moves as a whole and works where it is drawn.
Assign Action runs a macro (from the list or typed, on the selection or
a fixed range, with an optional output cell) or a command (searched
among those a macro may run, with JSON parameters). Format Control edits
the value, limits, incremental and page change, cell link, orientation,
name and the locked and print flags, checking the same rules as the
engine. A button whose action needs approval, or whose macro would write
over data, asks in a prompt whose buttons press it again with the
answer.
New theme tokens (thumb, hover, pressed, fill, focus ring) are in the
contrast test; Button, Slider and Spin icons are drawn in code; the new
labels are translated in every interface language. The catalog gains
Developer › Controls (280 / 296).
Buttons, scroll bars (sliders) and spin buttons are written the three
ways the published formats describe: a control properties part
(xl/ctrlProps/ctrlPropN.xml, formControlPr with objectType, fmlaLink,
min, max, inc, page, val and horiz), a <control> in the sheet's
<controls> inside mc:AlternateContent with its anchor, print and locked
flags and a button's macro="[0]!Name", and a VML shape with
x:ClientData. Notes and controls share one VML drawing per sheet; shape
ids come from 1024-id blocks listed in the drawing's idmap (after the
blocks kept header and footer drawings use), notes first, so each
control's shapeId names its VML shape.
Reading prefers the properties part, takes the caption from the VML
text box and falls back to the VML alone for files that only have it.
Values are clamped to whole numbers 0..30000 and repaired to pass the
model's rules.
Form controls of other kinds (check boxes, list boxes, drop-downs) stay
with pass-through: the reader returns the shape numbers it modelled,
and pass-through keeps the rest of the <controls> element and VML
drawing without them. On save, modelled controls join the kept
<controls> element and take a fresh shape block in the kept drawing, so
a sheet with both round-trips without duplicates. Properties part names
are reserved so kept parts of other sheets don't collide with them.
Button actions xlsx has no place for (commands, fixed inputs, output
cells) travel in a chunked hidden name keyed by sheet and position, and
are taken back out on open. The streaming sheet parser now splits only
shallow <row> elements, so an anchor's <xdr:row> inside <controls> stays
in the tree.
A sheet holds form controls as floating objects of a new kind
(ObjKind::Control): buttons that run a macro or one command, and sliders
and spin buttons that hold a whole number from 0 to 30000 and write it
to a linked cell. They take part in everything other objects do: ids
from the workbook sequence, object.move, object.delete and
object.setAnchorMode, the Selection Pane and Bring Forward / Send
Backward, anchors that follow row and column edits, fresh ids on a
copied sheet, and links that follow inserts, deletes, cut-moves, sheet
renames and sheet deletes like chart series.
Commands (cmd/controls.rs): insert.button, insert.slider,
insert.spinButton, control.format, control.assign, control.setValue,
control.press and the control.list query. Each numeric rule (0 <= min <
max <= 30000, 1 <= step <= max - min, page >= step for sliders) is
refused with its own message, and values are clamped and snapped to the
step. control.setValue writes the linked cell through cell.set inside
one undo group, so dependents recalculate and one Undo restores both;
every commit moves linked controls to what their cells hold.
control.press runs a button's macro through macro.run, or its command
through the macro policy with the document's trust, so a button in a
workbook opened from a file asks before it runs anything. Like a macro
step, the command runs inside the scripts' file sandbox unless it is an
approved file command. Macros never press controls, and macro.rename
keeps buttons pointing at the renamed macro.
macro.run, macro.check and the debugger take `output`, which replaces
the macro's output anchor for that run (a button that sends the output
elsewhere). The policy and the approval go by the stored macro; the
footprint, the conflict rule and the per-step check work on the cells
`output` names. A value that isn't reference text of at most 1,024
characters, or names no cell, is refused before anything runs.
gaps.md §4 carried two evidence paragraphs, an older one saying PRs #158
and #161 were open and a newer one saying all 2-D kinds survive XLSX round
trip, both repeating the resize, smooth-line, Switch Row/Column and
trendline statements. It is one paragraph with the current status again.
The Mainstream chart row in target-app-parity.md listed trendlines as
missing; they are read, written and drawn (`Series::trendlines`, the XLSX
chart reader and writer, `chart.addElement`), as chart-parity.md records.
The row now says so and keeps "no axis options". No score change.
gaps.md (§4), target-app-parity.md (the Essentials tier's work, the
Mainstream chart row, the interaction discount and the Essentials chart
task) and chart-parity.md (the element table and the work list) still
described charts as impossible to resize (#190). Charts move and resize
from eight handles like every floating object, so those statements now
say so; the 2026-10-10 revision rows and the 10-10 re-check stay as
history. Scores and the 40-60 h chart estimate are unchanged (resizing
was 1-2 h, within the rounding).
The sheet tracked the selected object as a bare id in `selected_chart`, so
only charts and text boxes drew a selection frame, only the bottom-right
corner resized, and the kind of the selected object had to be guessed from
the id. The selection is now `SheetApp::selected_object: Option<ObjRef>`,
with `selected_chart()` kept for the Chart Design tab and the Format Chart
pane.
- Model: `ObjKind` (chart, image, shape, slicer) and `ObjRef { kind, id }`;
`Sheet` helpers find, move and remove an object by `ObjRef` and walk every
object's anchor in a fixed order. `next_object_id` saturates instead of
overflowing on an id at `u32::MAX` read from a file.
- Commands: `object.delete`, `object.move` and `object.setAnchorMode` accept
the four kinds through one parameter check, refuse an unknown kind or id
instead of succeeding silently, and clamp hostile offsets. `object.delete`
replies with the deleted object. Arrange and the Selection Pane include
slicers, which stack above the other objects.
- Sheet: the selected object of any kind draws a frame with eight handles
over every object. Each handle resizes only its own edges, which never
cross; the body moves the object, and the first drag frame already applies
the pointer's movement. The pointer shows the handle's resize cursor or a
move cursor, with the diagonals swapped on a right-to-left sheet, where the
frame moves with its object.
- Keys: Escape drops the object selection; Delete and Backspace keep
deleting the selected object (#213). A selection whose object disappears
(undo, redo, delete, sheet switch) is cleared.
- Double-click: `open_object` routes by kind (a text box edits in place, a
chart opens Format Chart).
- Control protocol: `ui.inspect` reports `selectedObject {kind, id}` and
keeps `selectedChart`; `ui.object.select` selects any object and replies
with its rect. The snapshot example takes `--object <id>`.
Tests: engine tests for every kind by kind and id, the Selection Pane and
hostile parameters; UI tests for selecting each kind (a slicer over a chart
takes the click), all eight handles on four kinds, cursors, Delete,
Backspace and Escape, undo and redo, double-click routing, and resizing on a
right-to-left sheet. Existing tests use the new selection API.
prxnvt
aiongg
Brandon Thomas
Harrison Booth
Cédric Legrand