Hi chad, > How could apply different styles to different formats in a WYSIWYG manner?
Basically, just like you do it now. Where's the problem? > Okay, what? You want to force users to learn new terms like strong and > emphasis, after decades of bold and italics - so that these new terms > can do > the exact same blank thing as the terms they know and understand? Please > explain how that in an improvement. I see your point here. I don't have an answer to it. Yes, what i want is to change the way people work. In web page creation this movement is more or less successful. The W3C is dropping certain old style HTML tags over the years and web designers are slowly adopting to separate content from styling. And if they do it right, they'll figure that it's to their benefit and makes things easier and more flexible. I'm imagining the same is possible in word processing. It would of course take a while. > How is a popup window that won't go away until you make a decision you > didn't want to make and didn't know was coming, is "non-interrupting UI". > As you said, that's restrictive. I don't want a program to not let me do > stuff. If I want one green italics superscript letter in the middle of my > 10000 word document - I should be able to do that. And I shouldn't have to > define a style to do so. I did not mention anything about a popup window. It is the first thing that comes to mind, yes, but it is not the right thing as you are saying. However, there are many different possibilities on non-interrupting UI. I'm not saying that you can't have a single word in your 10000 word document marked green. - If your template allows for it. - As said before, I'm thinking of something that allows the same flexibility as you have right now. But there are environments like corporate settings in which restriction is a wanted thing. And a helpful thing. If you are an extpert in xyz within your company and create a document about it, you don't want to bother with putting it in your companies style. You probably don't even know or care much about it. But your manager does, your marketing guys do etc etc. . You still want to highlight certain parts etc., and what I'm aiming for is a way that automatically establishes that highlighting in the way the companies style requires it. > A choosable restriction? I don't want some template to force me to do > stuff. And I don't want to have to define a style if I was a single > word to stand out. Sorry, but i think your fantasy is a bit limited here. For a start, imagine you'd have the same bold button in your toolbar. You mark a word and click the bold button to highlight it. The only difference now is that internally the application creates a whole new style for that single word, that contains the bold property. Let's say you pick a second word in your text that is otherwise exactly formatted in the same way as the first and you make that bold as well. The application could realize that that style already exists and instead of creating yet another one, just applies the same style to that second word as well. >From your side nothing changes, but every single formatting you did is expressed in styles internally. This is basically what MS-Word does already. Now you take that a bit further ... to a point where you have templates (if you or your boss want that) and your bold button is more of a highlight button. The template now tells what property this highlighting actually gets. It could be bold by default, so nothing has changed. But a template author could modify it to be green underlined if he wants to. Just as you can change the bold tag in HTML via CSS to be green underlined instead. I'm presuming you don't see the benefit of this because you are solely looking from a single user point of view. > I really don't like anything about this idea. It sounds like a > lot more work for the users, just so some techie geeks can say "ah - now > the > word is at peace. The code is pure." - It doesn't help the end user at > all. It only helps coders and OCDers. No, it's not more work for the user at all. But it's a lot of work for the developers. And the code will get more complex. > It empowers no one. It takes away power. I guess if we deleted all but 10 > fonts, that would free up designers from having to choose a font, right? > What kind of 1984 double-speak is this? Empowerment through restriction. > Freedom through slavery. Peace through war. You are not entirely getting my point. It's not my idea you are fighting here. > Right - a solution that works. A solution that is a real-world one. The > only reason that every office suite on earth can open Word files is because > they have to be able to in order to be to taken seriously. If OOo didn't > open MSO files - I'd never touch it. And neither would most people. In > fact, that was a big "selling point" for 2.0 "Better Microsoft Office > Compatibility!". If you can't play nice with the big dog - you don't play > at all. And that's what would make ODF the "universal" format. If one big > office suite took over the marketplace and used only ODF or used ODF as > default. Otherwise, it ain't happening. I think those times are over. But i could be wrong. > But, more on topic, if a single entity created an office suite with all the > parts we talked about, and they all had the same fully cross-platform > platform, that was easy to code for, truly self-containted and native to > all > major platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix) and meet all those needs - > it could take on Microsoft. It could change the world. It could take > over. But it's not going to happen from a collection of pick-and-choose > different vendors - which is why Linux will never replace Windows. Mac > OS X > might replace Windows - but Linux won't. Mac OS X is controlled - there is > only one Mac OS X. There is only one place to get it. There is only one > company - actually, only one man, that can change it. Steve Jobs is our > benevolent dicatator, and what Jobs says is law. And guess what - that > works. A million code jockeys in their garages banging out yet another > distro - that will never work. A billion people reinventing the wheel on a > daily basis - not going to work. Did you blame me for restricting people, above? But if Steve Jobs is restricting people it's the right way to go? Your "Mac OS X is controlled" talking sounds somewhat like the argumentation of Microsoft against OpenSource, of Bertelsmann agains Wikipedia. Also, it is right to introduce yet another eMail client but it's wrong to introduce yet another Linux distro? Is it maybe because of the same reason that people are reinventing the wheel so many times - because they think they'll do it the right way? Just as you are thinking that an OOo email client would be the right one? Yes, you can take over the market (can you? - I believe the drive behind OOo is more than just MS-Office compatibility) with an all in one OpenSource Office Suite. What is the benefit of that? Why don't we not stick with Microsoft then? We already have that scenario, only that it isn't OpenSource. Surely that would add a little benefit. But working together on standards and better interaction between different applications is the far better way if you ask me. André. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
