In a message dated 2009.09.24 12:27 -0500, NoOp wrote:
... OO [Writer] recognizes, and tries to encapsulate, structural
entities. With respect to text, those entities seem to be
characters, lines, paragraphs, and OO provides formatting
capabilities to independently adjust spacing of each of those
entities. However, AFAICS there is no comparable treatment for
words or sentences - no recognition of words or sentences as
structural elements, and no independent spacing adjustments between
words or between sentences. Is that correct?
Yes/no.
Yes there is no comparable treatment for words.
No, there is spacing for sentences; indent, line spacing, single,
1.5 lines, double proportional, at least, leading, fixed.
Lines (which I recognized above as having formatting attention from
Writer) are not sentences. Lines are essentially spatial; sentences are
essentially syntactical. Without going too deep into this:
- A sentence may occupy part of a line or several lines. Its only
inherently spatial attribute is the distance from the end of one
sentence to the beginning of the next within a paragraph; that's what I
mean by sentence spacing. Similarly, the only inherently spatial
attribute of a word is the distance from the end of one word to the
beginning of the next within a sentence; that's what I mean by word
spacing. [A check of the archive shows that this question has been
raised before (even with the same subject line, last year), most
recently in the thread "How do you turn a single spaced Doc into
double-spaced?" from late August, where Guy interpreted the question as
asking how to double the spacing between words.]
- OTOH, a paragraph has both spatial and syntactical significance.
Its spatial components are lines. Its syntactical components are
sentences, which are composed of words.
Perhaps you are looking for a desktop publisher instead of a word processor?
The irony in that question is the idea that to recognize words one must
*not* use a word processor. I don't know. The line between those
categories is fuzzy, and some word processors do recognize words (and
sentences) as having independent spacing attributes. I don't know why
that capability would not be part of a "/word/ processor" when many
attributes having nothing to do with words are considered in the design
of word processors. To turn the irony around and view it from the other
direction: Writer has many layout features clearly aimed at desktop
publishing.
I want to thank you for your reply. It's not my objective to challenge
your reply or Writer's design; I'm just trying to understand the design
and capabilities.
<digression>
A confession, and maybe an apology: Attempting to learn OO (Writer and
other components), I have tended to embed "how-to" questions inside
"why" questions about design philosophy. Understanding a program's
structure and design philosophy have always helped me to learn it more
quickly and thoroughly - it can save a lot of detailed questions - but
it may be off-putting: Someone who might have a thought on how to do
something might be deterred from replying by the attendant concern about
why OO works that way. I suspect some questions have gone unanswered
for that reason (though I don't completely discount the possibility of
the "how-to" being elusive).
I persist in this because I want to see OO succeed (for lots of reasons)
and because I want to know that OO will repay commitment with capability
to do what I need, now and in the future. To those ends, OO's structure
and design philosophy are as important as its current capabilities. But
I do apologize if that makes my posts difficult.
</digression>
Thanks for confirming my understanding about word and sentence spacing,
John
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