Jonathon Coombes wrote:
On 07/02/2006, at 8:51 AM, Robin Laing wrote:
Jonathon Coombes wrote:
More SNIP!
The problem with WYSIWYG displays is you see a problem and try to fix
the formatting by changing or redoing the style but it doesn't work.
Or as I have come across before, you change a style that is only
supposed to affect a paragraph but affects a whole document after the
edit point because of how the document was put together. This is
where reveal codes shine. I have had issues where I wanted to do
something but I could not get the cursor in the exact location to
achieve what I wanted. This would have been easy with reveal codes.
The main reason changing a style does not work is because somebody has
used a
"hard" format over it eg hit the bold button, italics etc. rather than
using styles. Use
the Format > Default Formatting to take away styles and see what hard
formats are
still applied.
The styles are designed to work within their specific confines. That
is, paragraph
styles will affect all paragraphs of that style. If you need it
different for only one
paragraph, then you should create a new style from the existing one for
that
specific paragraph.
It seems to me that the problem is not that styles are a problem, or
that reveal codes
are needed, it is more that people who use reveal codes do not know the
best method
for using styles and how they should work. This means they end up using
a loose
combination of styles and formats and lead themselves into the problem
that they
believe reveal codes will fix?
But for many of the documents I work with, the styles don't exist or I
would need to create them. In many cases, that would take more time
than is required if reveal codes was available. The format of the
document will be totally changed if doing a default style when the
necessary style does not exist and then I have to do all the work to
re-create the document.
As you say, a specific style would need to be created and in many
cases, in my work, it would be used for one document only. I do agree
that the mixture of styles and hard coding can cause it's own problems
but that is a reality when working in an area where there are many
different imports and formats of documents being used.
In my job I have to integrate stuff that comes from old WPD (thank you
OOo 2.0 for support), text, LaTeX and other formats into a single
document. There is no common formatting and many of the formats have
hard codes embedded. This is why Reveal Codes in my work would be
great. I have used the Reveal Codes Macro and it has saved me some
work.
In one case, no matter what I did with Styles, I could not get a
weird, and wrong formatting problem to clear up. It was something
hard coded and I never got it working and I had to use MS Word to fix
it. :( This was before the Reveal Codes Macro.
SNIP!
I like styles for what I know but for me, I am in the previous group
of allot of one-time items where styles are not that time saving. I
need quick formatting that isn't always achievable via styles.
OK. So here is the problem I think. Your quick formatting method is
applying hard
formatting by simply hitting the icons on the toolbar instead of
applying styles (
still usually one click when they exist). This is causing your problems
with the
styles not seeming to work properly or consistently.
In many cases I would have to create a style for that particular
document. I have not had the time to work in depth with styles. The
icons allow me to be more productive at present.
I have used some of the default styles but they don't always provide
what I need.
Don't get me wrong, I think in many situations, Styles are a great
time saver and a very power full tool. But there are many situations
and cases where Styles just doesn't cut it.
I work with people that have moved to LaTeX as it allows them total
control over the formatting after having Word change the formatting of
a document and not allowing it to undo. One of the people I work with
is slowly moving to OOo from Word and has spent much time learning how
to create styles to meet his needs.
It would be nice if OOo offered the best of both worlds. That is my
opinion.
If there was WordPerfect for Linux again, I would be purchasing it.
If StarOffice provided Reveal Codes, I would purchase it. Reveal
codes to me is worth money.
I tried WordPerfect for Linux when they had it last time, but it was
too flakey.
It kept on dying and doing weird things, it just was not reliable.
No kidding. It would be nice if Novel still owned WP as they are on a
big Linux push. Corel just didn't put the effort into the product to
make it productive.
Regards
Jonathon
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