Giuseppe Bilotta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> I'm not challenging the fact that it's possible to apply hard > formatting (in the specific case, character attributes) > using macros. What I'm saying is that doing it via macros is > not in any way comparable to doing it via styles. > > It's not a matter of applying a (soft) style via the stylist > or via a macro, it's about applying soft styles vs applying > hard formatting. With your method of doing things, you could > get rid of styles altogether and just use macros to apply > hard formatting. But that goes *against* the whole purpose > of styles. > Well, I think that the border between hard and soft formatting is more flexible than you suppose. Down at the level of the actual XML, they are equally hard. What makes something "soft" rather than "hard" is that it can be redefined independently to reflect its semantics. For example, the important thing about a "Heading 1" style is that it represents an important subject division, and I can decorate this as I want with a whole bundle of formatting attributes that can be separately redefined. But a language attribute can't be decorated in that way. It is is purely semantic. It's on the line between hard and soft in that sense. There's nothing to stop my macro being expanded to add something like a different font for Swedish text. In that case, with two attributes, it's applying a style -- but (and this may be important) one which inherits all the other attributes from the surrounding text. And it's that broad- minded inheritance mechanism which you can't easily set up with the stylist, which demands that you specify the style from which yours will inherit. I still think I am applying a style here, rather than hard formatting. Of course, if you want to change that style, you have to edit the macro, rather than the style defnition; and this is a pain. But it doesn't have to be. A sufficiently ingenious add-on writer could make a dialogue box that let you rewrite the macro as easily as you currently change styles. Then what would the difference be? In any case, the interesting question is whether my method is actually useful to anyone. I can't see that OOo will change its model for representing languages in a hurry. In the meantime there are lots of people who have problems with the present system. I offer a way around some of those problems. It may be imperfect. But it may be better than nothing. -- Andrew Brown The email in the header does not work. Contact details and possibly useful macros from http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/bugs/oo_macros.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
