Michele wrote:
Hello All,
Following up an exchange of emails with Jean a couple of months ago, I have
started to work on a restructuring of chapters 6 and 7 of the Writer Guide.
My initial concern with these two chapters was that the level of detail
which one may expect to find in a user guide was missing with many options
of the style dialog not sufficiently described, however going through the
text I also found that it lacked a bit of structure with certain topics
being presented in sub-optimal order and other topics that an occasional
reader would be surprised to find in a chapter discussing styles.
It is of course my intention to retain *all* the existing material (in
particular the screenshots, as I would not want PHB to knock at my door with
a gun in his hand :-) )
At present this is the table of contents I have in mind.
New chapter 6
1 give an introduction to styles
2 describe the Styles and Formatting window as well as discussing the 4 ways
to create a new style
3 Modify an existing style (examples of ch.6) <still not sure if this is
needed>
4 Create new styles and fine tune them (the poem examples of ch.6)
5 Managing styles (copying, moving, deleting, template management).
6. Assigning styles to keyboard strokes
7. Outline levels (hierarchy of headers)
(6 and 7 may also be placed in an annex. 7 in particular, although very much
style-related is not strictly speaking a topic belonging to a chapter on
styles. 7 maybe should be moved to another chapter and just referenced in
ch.6)
new Chapter 7
1. Paragraph style (detailed description of the parameters and hints on
usage)
2. Characther style (detailed description of the parameters and hints on
usage)
3. Frame style (detailed description of the parameters and hints on usage)
4. Page style (detailed description of the parameters and hints on usage)
5. List style (detailed description of the parameters and hints on usage)
6. Conditional styles
7.Controlling page breaks
8. Page numbering
9. Headers and footers (Xrefs)
(8 and 9 are probably going to end up in an annex as a normal reader would
not probably look for such topics in a chapter about styles. Probably like
item 7 of new Ch.6, they should be moved to another chapter and just
referenced in new Ch.7)
I am almost done shifting sections around, so I expect to upload something
in the next week or so. If you have some suggestions in the meanwhile please
do not hesitate to let me know.
Cheers,
Michele
Something should also be written about the numerous predefined Numbering
x and List x paragraph styles. Doing Web searches about that a year ago
seemed to indicate that those particular paragraph styles were never
formally mentioned in the Help or elsewhere and were probably left in
newer OOo versions, much like a human appendix.
I often utilize some of those styles, although their vertical-spacing
defaults are usually modified to my preferences. FrameMaker users often
employ similar paragraph tags for their numbered and bulleted lists.
BTW, our own documentation doesn't employ them in lists.
Gary
--
Gary Schnabl
2775 Honorah
Detroit MI 48209
(734) 245-3324
