On Monday 14 July 2008, Marc Santhoff wrote: > Hi Hal, > > Am Montag, den 14.07.2008, 15:40 -0400 schrieb Hal Vaughan: > > I think I'm going to switch over to a different idea which involves > > my own form of auto-text using macros. One thing I want to do is > > keep 4 main macros that are available from any script document I'm > > working on, but then have specifics, like character names, that are > > stored only in particular documents and be able to transfer them > > back and forth. I may do that with a separate text file that goes > > with each script so one can be loaded and "imported" easily. > > IIRC you want to set four different formattings (indentations) by > four corresponding macros bound to shortcut keys?
That's one of two parts of what I want to do. I've got that done and those are regular macros accessible from any document. (I still haven't figured out how to make macros document specific -- is it as simple as specifying the name of the document for the storage library?) The second part of what I want to do is be able to define character names on the fly while I'm typing so when I hit a key or key combo, it'll automatically change the margin and print the character's name. This is what I was going to use AutoText for. I could hit a character, like A for Allen, then F3 and it would type ALLEN, but first it would call a macro to change the margin. The problem is not being able to bind the macro that changes the margin to the AutoText. To solve that, I think I'm going to bind the F4 key, which isn't used, to a macro. It'll work like AutoText in some ways. It'll check the last character typed and use that as a lookup, find the associated text, then change the margin and type that text. Since I'm not using AutoText, I can store all the names in a text file that can be imported to other documents. It'll take more work but it'll do the same thing. The one advantage is that I can keep the names for each script stored separately so I don't get overwhelmed with hundreds of names for a bunch of scripts at once. ... > > I had what was, for me, an almost perfect and > > fairly simple system on Word Perfect that was great for me and I'm > > trying to set up something similar under OOo. Of course when I'm > > done, I'll post it in at least one of the appropriate places. > > I can imagine that your problems are coming from "thinking the Word > Perfect way", because OO.o does simply work differently. Where the > old DOS version of wp had control codes, OO.o has style templates for > anything - pages, paragraphs and characters. Yes, OOo works QUITE differently and there are many times I've found it very frustrating. With WP, I could easily write macros to do anything without a lot of research, but for OOo, it's like Java: I have to define things for 2-3 lines before finally doing what I want. Yes, I know it's MUCH more powerful, but it's hard to get a good API reference for Basic -- say, to get just a list of what I can do in Basic with a document object or a control object in a dialog object. Please note I'm not saying it's bad and I'm not trying to rag on anyone. After learning Java (and remember I'm a self taught coder), I can see the reasons the API is done the way it is done. I just don't like it and it's not the way I think or do things. I'm also still getting use to having to design different page styles instead of doing something like defining a header, then suppressing it on some pages or changing it at one point and it's different from then on instead of having to make up a whole new page style -- which is what you were talking about. I do see the benefits and strengths of the OOo way of doing things, but I'm still trying to get used to thinking that way when I'm in my creative mode instead of my technical mode. I was exploring a lot of this 3-5 years ago and had many questions on this list, but I ended up having to focus on just writing a Java app to do a few functions with OOo. (I considered using C++, but I had to learn whichever one I picked, and I knew whatever I wrote in Java would work on Windows and Linux without changing the code and that any GUI I did in C++ might not work so well like that.) In the long run, the Java app did nothing but load in documents, print them, then close the document and do it again. I did need to do a mail merge, but it was easier to load in the source file in directly in Java and do the find/replace work through Java than through OOo. Once the merge was done, it left all the documents I had to print. Now I finally have time to explore OOo as a tool to use for my writing. I'm eager to get these basic macros and functions working so I can just write. As I get used to it, I'll learn more and find more ways to customize OOo. Hal --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
