jonathon wrote:
On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 05:40, John Kaufmann 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.
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.
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copies, including breaking any CDs or DVDs that it has been
archived on.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;
Only beneficial if you are the only one that works on the document and
that all others have the same knowledge and training to use styles and
that all users are using OOo.
 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".
Reveal Codes may have been a way to get around the bugs but it has
become a major tool that keeps people with WordPerfect over OpenOffice
or Word from the WordPerfect users that I work with. We have a site
license for Word.
My wife who writes a lot still wants Reveal Codes. She doesn't like the
restrictions of Styles on the free flow of thinking. Not all writing is
strictly formatted as a business document.
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.
jonathon
I have used styles and they can be great but creating a style for a
one-of document is not a time useful task for many users. Also many
users of Word, WordPerfect or OOo do not take courses or the time to use
all the tools that make their applications have. This compounds the
problem as they do use Word processors as typewriters and use manual
formatting.
When working with others and between programs, formatting can get
changed and reveal codes can be a real time saver. This is why I feel
that OOo could be better than both WordPerfect and Word by adding the
option for a Reveal Codes like feature. It can work within styles and
be used to find these weird and hidden control codes that cause many of
us hours of frustration.
I am adding a comment to
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3395
Even though I like styles, they are not perfect in any way.
--
Robin Laing
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