Re: Codes
Whoopee! The absence of reveal codes is up for discussion again, and we continue to have defenders of the absence of this great WP tool. It allows SEEING where things happen and CHANGING them by deleting the codes. It is an ADDITIONAL convenience, not a requirement. Nobody is forced to display the reveal codes window. --- On Fri, 6/21/13, Virgil Arrington cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: From: Virgil Arrington cuyfa...@hotmail.com Subject: Re: Codes To: users@openoffice.apache.org Date: Friday, June 21, 2013, 2:24 PM There *is* a reveal styles. It's in the Formatting Toolbar, where the style for the paragraph containing the cursor is clearly displayed. Press F11 and you'll get a list of all the available paragraph styles. Right click on any one of them, click Modify and you can see all of the formatting characteristics applying to that style. Make any formatting changes you want and they will apply to any paragraph having that particular style. As for other formatting parameters, you don't need a code to tell you that a word is in Boldface as it will appear in Boldface on the screen. Blue text will appear blue, and you won't need a code to tell that. Now, you may not know *why* the text is blue, but if you simply right click on the applied paragraph style in the style list, you can then change the character formatting to any color you want (the same as you would with direct formatting, just within the style itself). Once changed, all paragraphs having that paragraph style will automatically change to the new color. With WordPerfect, you'd have to go into each and every paragraph or column frame and manually change each one to the color you want. And, if you made a mistake in one of them, you'd end up with inconsistent formatting. Of course you could track it down with your reveal codes, but with styles, you wouldn't have to. It's not rocket science, but I'll agree that it is not intuitive to the typewriter model followed by WordPerfect. Let me give an example of the benefit of styles. Several years ago, my 14 year old son challenged himself to type a 50,000 word novel in November, which is National Novel Writers Month. He met his goal, and quickly dropped the project. As a proud papa, I wanted to put his document to paper. He wrote the original in WordPerfect, and it was a formatting mess, with stray tabs, carriage returns, and inconsistent formatting across chapter and section headings. Using WP's beloved reveal codes, I began the task of reformatting his 127 page novel. It didn't take long for me to realize it would take days and days to wade through all of the formatting codes inserted by WP. Instead, I saved the document as a plain text file, stripping all formatting. I then loaded it into LyX, which is a GUI LaTeX editor. LaTeX is the ultimate in styles-based document processing as there is no other way to do things. I applied the Part and Chapter styles, (called environments in LaTeX speak) to the part and chapter titles, and then inserted a fully formatted, numbered, and typed table of contents with a couple mouse clicks. I set NO page formatting parameters such as page margins, page numbering, etc., as those were handled entirely by the Book template (called document class). I then compiled the book and had a fully formatted novel, complete with Title page, Table of Contents, properly formatted right and left hand pages with fully formatted headers with page numbers, etc. The entire process took about a half hour. I surprised even myself. I could have done the same thing with OpenOffice's styles, but they're not quite as fully automatic as LyX/LaTeX, so it would have taken a bit longer, but not much. Yes, styles can be difficult to learn, much the same as learning a new cable TV remote control. But once learned, you'll appreciate all you can do with them, and you won't go back to the typewriter (or it's only begotten son, WordPerfect), just like I won't go back to rabbit ears for my TV. Virgil -Original Message- From: Tamblyne Sent: Friday, June 21, 2013 5:29 PM To: users@openoffice.apache.org Subject: Re: Codes Hi, Patricia -- Of course, you're going to be told -- and I can see that you already have -- that you're not doing it right. Use styles. Styles will, apparently, take care everything, including promote world peace, as well as fix all that's wrong with your document. Perhaps if we asked for reveal styles instead of reveal codes, we could get some progress on this issue. The View Non-printing characters doesn't help much unless what you're looking for is carriage returns/line-feeds, as far as I can tell. It certainly doesn't tell me what styles are being applied to any given portion of the document. And it doesn't show formatting codes, either. As an old WP user (and aren't we all, at this point?), I argued passionately for this enhancement long ago.
Re: help printing
Last week I brought up Wordperfect's Reveal Codes function. It also has a Make It Fit function. You select the number of pages you want and hit the button. Don't know if it works on spreadsheets though. Is that what Fit Print does? --- On Wed, 1/30/13, Haim (Howard) Roman ro...@jct.ac.il wrote: From: Haim (Howard) Roman ro...@jct.ac.il Subject: Re: help printing To: users@openoffice.apache.org Date: Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 4:40 AM On Open Office 3.2 (old, I know), I do the following: Format -- Page -- Sheet -- Scale -- Scaling Mode You probably want one of the Fit print... choices. ~~ Haim (Howard) Roman Computer Center, Jerusalem College of Technology Phone: 052-8-592-599 (6022 from within Machon Lev) On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Abigayle Gibson financeoffi...@cityofparsons.com wrote: To whom it may concern: I have been trying to print a spreadsheet out in open office. I am trying to get it to fit to one page and it has taken me days to try to get it formatted to fit one page. I have had to work with increasing and or decreasing the rows, columns, font and font size to try to get it to fit to one page and then there is still ample room on the print preview to increase the size of the font (as with all of our employees we have sight problems). It has been a nightmare compared to using Microsoft. So I am hoping you can enlighten me on an easier way to get this spreadsheet increased to fit one page so that it is readable. Thanks, Abby CMFO - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
Try /View /Non printing characters. This allows one to exactly position the cursor. That's totally different. It shows paragraph breaks and spaces, not formatting codes. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
Gosh, I wish we could display a screen shot here of what we're talking about! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
document with 100 formatting errors. A correct version of the document must be available It's not so much about errors as the ease of making changes when revising one's text. People who write exactly what their final version should be the first time may have to deal with errors. The rest of us have to edit and revise to achieve the final result. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: [Inserting special characters (and Word Perfect)]
For certain cases where I use some symbols repeatedly, I make up a document that serves as a palette that I can copy and paste It would be nice to have a palette from which one could drag and drop characters.It would be faster when including words/phrases from other languages, for example. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
I wish people who have made some of the comments actually had experience with the Reveal Codes function in WP. First, for those not familiar with it, the Reveal Codes can be turned on and off and the amount of space (number of lines of text) it consumes on the screen is under complete control. You have unencumbered text in one window, and text with the codes in another -- IF you want it. This is very different from turning on codes like paragraph markers, which are all or nothing and litter the entire text. Second, all this talk about styles is totally irrelevant. Styles exist quite happily alongside the reveal codes option. But users must not be allowed to make changes at that level [delete]; instead, they must be required, having discovered what the problem is, to solve it where it was caused. Anything else breaks the structure. I really don't understand this rather authoritarian recommendation. If I write something in bold and want to convert one or some words to normal type when I review my text, that's my business. Why should I not be allowed to change a word? And if I can do that by simply putting my cursor on a Bold code and deleting it, what great law am I violating? There's no structure being broken, just editing between bold and normal. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
just select default formatting to clear all formatting. Why destroy everything and start over if all that's necessary is to put the cursor on a code and DEL For ex, a hard page break that becomes out of place because text has been added during editing. Click on the page break code, it's done. The doc reformats. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
If attachments work here, there will be a screen shot of WP with the Reveal Codes window open. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: reveal codes
That's exactly how you do it in OpenOffice, select the word and click on the Bold icon. It's not that simple. In Open Office you have to be careful about selecting spaces AFTER a word. If you select a word to make bold and happen to include the space after the word, then come back when editing your text and remove the bold or remove the word but fail to take account of what you originally did to the space following the word, the bold code is still there, invisible. You start typing your replacement word or additional text and it is bold, unintentionally. With reveal codes, you see and can remove what has become a stray, unwanted bold code. Again, reveal codes is voluntary, in a separate window, it doesn't clutter your basic text but gives much fuller and easier control over it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
