Hi Clayton,
In a message dated 2010.09.06 03:55 -0500, Clayton wrote:
Referring people to the Help risks worse confusion, because that
describes the Page style "Envelope" - which is at best ambiguously
connected to the formatting of the Insert > Envelope command. The
problem is so fundamental to OO design that the three main info
resources - the Help, the wiki Writer Guide and the wiki FAQ all have
different descriptions of the process - and all are wrong in one or
more details. This is one of those routine issues that gives OO a
reputation as difficult to learn.
So... what specifically is wrong in the User Guide? the FAQ? the Help?
For specifics, I would refer you to two of the three threads referenced
in my last post - "Envelope page styles" of 28.May.2010 and "What is the
use of the envelope style?" of 9-12.Jun.2019 - particularly the latter
(which elicited some discussion). The problem with the Help, in
particular, is that it refers to the /really/ anomalous "Envelope" page
style and, as experienced Writer users have posted here, you just don't
want to go there. [Note that, in his advice to the OP, Johnny did not go
there.] I want to go over the details again in one of the dev lists<*>,
but don't want to burden the bandwidth this list again, as this is not
where the problems will be solved.
[<*> But which dev list? I have been on qa-dev for a couple months,
trying to gauge if that is the place. But it is not a very active list,
and I posted only one question, which received no replies.]
Each of these can be fixed. The User Guide and FAQ could be corrected
right in the Wiki by someone... anyone... who knows what those errors
are. The application help can also be cleaned up, but that will require
a bug report.
Instead of saying it's broken and leaving it that way, lets get it
corrected and cleaned up. :-)
That is a perfect statement of an attitude to which I fully subscribe:
Let's fix it. The reason I have not tackled the wiki yet - either the
Writer Guide or the FAQ - is that I still (after strenuous efforts)
*don't know* how envelopes are supposed to work, or how to make sense of
something that does not make coherent sense. I suspect that is what
people have tried to do, and why the various info sources are incoherent
on the subject. IOW, I suspect that the problem is less with the
documentation than with the design - and that it may go beyond the
"Envelope" page style to more basic issues of how styles are structured
in Writer. That said, I just have not had time to do more, but am
committed to do so. As NoOp said some time back, it will probably
require digging into the sources - but without design specs, or some
clarity about the design intent, that can be a huge and unrewarding job.
John
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