On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 21:03 +1100, Zoltán Kócsi wrote: > On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 10:12:32 -0600 > Jim Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Thanks very much. I had never been able to make the [[:space:]] > > thing work. Now, having just tried it, I find that what I should be > > using is [ ], with nothing but a space between the brackets. > > Glad if I could be of some help. > > > It's the wording of the Regular Expressions list that's misleading > > for people with literal minds like mine. What could they do to > > remedy the situation, other than give a full explanation as you've > > just done? > > Regexp is a fairly complex beast and probably quite unnatural unless > you have some sort of programming training. In that sense it is > questionable how useful regexps are in a generic word processor for the > general public, but if you happen to have regexp experience by using > tools like perl, awk, grep, lex and alike then you can express quite > complex searches efficiently. > > I think maybe regexp should have a full chapter in the help system for > itself. To explain how it works and actually showing the tricks and also > the possible pitfalls would require at least a 10-page description, in > my opinion, if not more. The regexp description in the grep manpage, > which is written for programmers and only lists the actual expression > syntax, is about two printed pages long. To make it useful for the > non-programmer users you will have to write a rather detailed and > lengthy description, with lots of examples. People are not dumb so they > could learni it but most descriptions about regexps are written for > people with programming background and thus they are full of references > to assumed knowledge. So, to be fair to OOo, I think it is not a trivial > task at all to explain regexp in a way that people trained in fields > completely unrelated to computer science would understand it and be > able to use it efficiently. >
Zoltan, I think your idea is a good one and encourage you to write up a HOW-TO that we could put in http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html so people can get up to speed. Please let me know if you can do this. -- PLEASE KEEP MESSAGES ON THE LIST. OpenOffice.org Documentation Co-Lead http://documentation.openoffice.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
