On Wednesday 14 May 2014 05:29:45 PM Brian Barker wrote:
> At 23:38 14/05/2014 +1000, Marina Tadiello wrote:
> >In general, and from a user's perspective, Styles are one example of
> >how common users are encouraged (or forced? :-) to think ("program")
> >and behave like computers.Yes, manual formatting is available. But using it is kind of perverse, because it means doing more work than necessary, and cutting yourself off from important features. Here's how I describe manual formatting in the introduction to the book I'm in the middle of completing: "Office suites are as old as the personal computer. Yet, after more than thirty years, few of us have bothered to learn how to use them. "Oh, we have learned how to get things done in them. Most of us can format a document and print it out, after a fashion. But what we haven't learned is to do these things efficiently, taking advantage of all the tools that are available. "It is as if we have learned enough about cars to go down hill in them and coast across level ground, but never learned about the ignition. We get things done, but with more effort and less efficiency that we should. Some tasks, like going uphill, we don't imagine are even possible because of our limited view." -- Bruce Byfield 604-421-7189 (on Pacific time) blog: https://brucebyfield.wordpress.com website: http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield/ ------------------------------------------- List Conduct Guidelines: http://openoffice.apache.org/list-conduct.html To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
