On 28/02/2006, at 4:12 AM, Rod Engelsman wrote:
G. Roderick Singleton wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 09:34 -0600, Rod Engelsman wrote:
G. Roderick Singleton wrote:
[snipped]
I'll agree with you that once you understand how it works, it's
fairly easy to deal with. I just don't think that a style is
where folks tend to look for that property.
I think you have hit the point. Our users have _NOT_ grasped that
OOo is
different and expect MSO behaviour without bothering to check the
differences. I do know that the people on both the doc project and
OOoAuthors try to compensate for that but there is a limit especially
when these are not even read by those needing the information. As
I said before, you can only idiot proof stuff so far before you
whatever you produce is so big it is useless. Nonetheless we try to
consider all levels of expertise especially with styles.
Hmmm... I think the phrase "idiot proof" in the context of this
particular issue is a bit condescending. It doesn't seem *logical*
to me to expect a Language setting to be associated with a Style.
Styles are about formatting and appearance. Language is an
orthogonal concept, perhaps more closely aligned with content than
format.
Hi Rod,
Actually you have this slightly mixed up I believe. Styles are not
directly about
formatting and appearance, although that does cover the majority of
it. The
style is a *logical* method of defining attributes. These attributes
can be as
formatting, appearance, language, associations etc.
I think the problem is that the present setup is unintuitive enough
that a lot of people never even think to ask the question that
could be answered in the docs or help.
It is unintuitive because people only work with one language. The
easiest
solution would be to have an internal script that lets you choose the
default
language which then adjusts the default templates to set the language to
that chosen default language. This would fix up 99.9% of the issues,
but may
not be feasible (have not looked closely at the likelihood of this
working).
SNIP
There's only so much you can do on the Support and Documentation
end of things. Sometimes the product just needs to be improved and
the User's list is a good source of information in that respect.
Agreed. Improvement is always a good things, but compromise needs to be
considered more carefully. Education is always the best tool, but
unfortunately
most people do not like to be told what to do :)
So my answer would be: There is no answer. OOo is a great product
but it's certainly not perfect. And some things are just screwy
enough that until they get changed they are going to generate a lot
of repetitive questions.
Agreed. I too have been on this list a long time (since it started),
and have seen
certain repetitive questions. This is one the reasons I started the
knowledgebase
to address these questions. There are also the FAQ's that address
these same
questions. The problem is that most people do not read the manual and
want
to get the quick fix by asking the question first and this will not
change in any
time in the near future.
Regards
Jonathon
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