jonathan,
In a message dated 2009.09.18 02:14 -0500, jonathon wrote:
makes the task predictable rather than frustrating, and quick rather than
time-consuming.
I'd argue that the task is very predictable, and easy, _if_ one pays
close attention to what one is doing, and where one is doing it. I"ll
grant time consuming, but that is a side effect of paying attention to
exactly where one is in the document.
I don't care to argue about it. For whatever reason, you ignore that
fact that I was *quoting* (admittedly with a sense of recognition) from
page 20 of the Writer guide 0208WG3-WorkingWithGraphics.odt, that "the
positioning of graphics is often rather time-consuming and may be very
frustrating for [even] experienced users." IOW, I'm hardly alone in
that impression. I've been using word processors for decades and never
found any merit in a task being made time-consuming or frustrating.
a) You have to know all of the attributes, and functions of each of
the character, paragraph, bullet, page, and frame styles in your
document, regardless of whther or not they are explicitly used.
That may indeed be part of the problem. I will admit to some irritation
at an OO tendency to adopt styles automagically, but then I'm still
learning how to turn off those things. However, the fact that styles
can be invoked without being "explicitly used" seems to me an argument
*for* a tool to examine formatting, rather than against it.
b) If there is any manual markup in the document, eradicate it, so
that it is utterly unrecoverable, Then delete all known backup
copies, including breaking any CDs or DVDs that it has been
archived on. Then, and only then, can you restart to write the
document from scratch, using styles exclusively;
My question was about a document which I wrote from scratch - 10-12
pages (depending how Writer decides to break pages), 21 photos and other
illustrations, 1 table and numerous small insert frames - so there were
no inherited issues. And for the most part positioning *was*
predictable (if not always as quick as I thought it should be) - at
least until content lengths changed, and then pictures that were
anchored to a paragraph might suddenly be on a different page, even
though Paragraph Text Flow options "Do not split paragraph" and "Keep
with next paragraph" were ticked (something else that seems needlessly
time-consuming: another word processor might simply let you highlight a
block of text and other objects, and then choose "Protect Block"). So I
was looking for a tool to help me see why certain cases did not behave
predictably with changes in text.
But what if I *had* been editing something from someone else? In what
possible universe would one say that the only proper way to edit that
document's formatting is to "restart to write the document from
scratch"? How does that attitude advance the word processor over the
typewriter? Again, why argue against any tool that highlights hidden
format constraints?
I guess I have been spoiled by a word processor that lets you "reveal" the
details of format constraints
Wordperfect has "reveal codes", only because of a number of show
stopping bugs that WordPerfect programmers couldn't fix. IOW, this
is a prime example of bugs and incompetent programming being defined
as a "feature".
This is ridiculous on many levels, of which a few are:
o I did not mention WordPerfect; you did. I did say that I find merit
in a tool that can reveal format constraints (which WP has always had),
and nothing you have said really argues to the contrary.
o The issue when editing a document is not whether the program or the
user is "at fault"; it is how to get to the desired output.
o If you want to disparage WP, please do it on your own time; I doubt
this is the proper forum for that. However, I have to challenge the
evidence-free assertion that WP has Reveal Codes only because its
"incompetent" "programmers couldn't fix" "show stopping bugs" [something
I also heard from MS Word boosters in the days when MS was giving away
Word with Windows to undermine WP]. In the AOS/Unix/DOS days (when
Reveal Codes was introduced), WP was always among the most bug-free of
major applications (something I can also personally affirm after years
as a beta tester for several word processors). The March 1992 minor
release of WP 5.1 remains to this day the only completely bug-free,
bullet-proof, application I have ever known (which may have had
something to do with its devoted following). I challenge you to
document *any* bug in it, let alone one motivating Reveal Codes. And,
in deference to members of this list, I will be happy to continue that
part of the conversation, which has nothing to do with OO, off-list.
But, if you want to play with the functional equivalent of reveal
codes in OOo, you can do so. However, unless you can write SGML by
hand, and have the output pass all known strict conformance tests
for the specific DTD you're using, you're better off not trying that
feat.
Yes, I have looked at Writer Core And Layout
<http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer_Core_And_Layout>,
trying to decide how involved that would be. That's when I asked the
question that began this thread. It's apparently doable but obviously
non-trivial, so unfortunately must take low priority on my to-do list.
That's why I was wondering if anyone else had taken a crack at it.
John
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