On 08/02/2006, at 4:16 AM, Robin Laing wrote:
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.
OK. This is generally not the case though, as most people work with a
standard
document set that is required.
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.
Yes, this would make it much harder. Maybe a macro that strips any
type of
formatting, be it styles or hard formats would be better and you
start from scratch?
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.
Hmmm... interesting. I have never had a situation like this, but I
have not had to
mix all the formats you mentioned either :)
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.
I am assuming that you apply fairly consistent types of formats to
the resulting
documents though, right? That is, make all headings the same style,
all text
body to the same font,style etc. These final styles could all be
defined in your
default template and ready for use as needed.
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 agree that the above would be difficult, but I think the use of the
word "many"
here may be a bit too general :)
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.
Well, there is the reveal codes macro :)
Regards
Jonathon
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