Robin Laing wrote:
No argument, the issue I find is when I import a document or multiple
documents, the formatting has been severely screwed up at times. Finding
the problem has been impossible in a few cases. So much so that I just
found a Windows computer with Word on to get the work done.
Yes. But I don't see what this has to do with styles in particular. I've
encountered messed-up documents of all sorts, when important from one
format to another. And indeed, sometimes the best and quickest way is to
just use the document in its native format. And, of course, one doesn't
usually have the leisure of four or five free hours to set down and
leisurely debug exactly what feature or features in the source file is
causing the trouble.
As someone else has stated, there is the underlying XML codes. The
styles each have a selection of options that are part of the coding.
What is reveal codes but a method of telling the user what the word
processor is doing with the text.
XML codes are not underlying within memory. The underlying objects and
structures are produced from a reading of HTML code and on saving HTML
code is created that allows the those structure to be produced again,
but probably not exactly the same.
Try creating a new HTML document in OpenOffice.org, turning on HTML
source view, and then pasting in some source code, perhaps by getting
your browser to provide you the source code from a web site.
Jump to Web Layout or Print Layout mode. The HTML should be displayed in
somewhat the same way as your browser displayed it. But then return to
Source View. You will find the code much different. OOo writer has
created internal structures from the HTML code and text data, and can
output HTML code from those structures and data, but it is not *using*
those codes internally. Change the coding in the Source Code view to
make it more structure and intelligent. OOo Writer will be able to read
most of your more structure code, will display what you expect. But when
you go back to Source Code view again, most, if not all, of your code
rearrangement and reworking will be gone.
OpenOffice.org doesn't use code token in a text stream internally.
There has to be some code someplace
that tells Writer how to display the text that is written.
There isn't, in the sense of code tokens.
There are no discrete formatting code tokens in a text stream. They
don't exist. Instead there are objects and structures and links and
pointers and plain text. Pointers may indicate the position in a plain
text stream within a paragraph object that something like the bolding
attribute starts and stops. But no code tokens.
Well, actually tab characters and end of line markers (the thing
displayed by a crooked arrow) do exist as genuine control characters
acting a formatting tokens. There are always exceptions. But I can't
think of anything else like that. There are no paragraph ending
characters for example. To display a page, the display system works its
way from one separate paragraph object to another.
Look at the code in the reveal code macro. Do you see anything that is
translation of actual code tokens within the OOo system to the codes
that the macro displays. The codes being created reflect the internal
workings of the system no more than, for example, the RTF code or MS
Word code in an output document produced by OOo Writer. They are being
created as output source code. They are not being "revealed".
No, they prefer the tool that WP provides as the Styles that Word
provides are not as forgiving or as functional. Heck, Word isn't even
as nice as OOo from one persons comments. Some of these people are
moving to LaTeX instead of Word for the formatting controls. We even
have default templates in LaTeX to use.
Moving to LaTeX is a good solution for complete control for publishing.
Poor old WordPerfect doesn't even support Unicode and for complex layout
you can indeed see at a more fundamental level what is actually going on
with LaTeX considered as code.
However your LaTex interpreter may or may not be using some or all of
those codes internally. That's entirely up to the designers that created it.
Press F11. Select any style in the Stylelist. Right-click. Select
"New". Name the style in the custom dialog box that comes up (and
ignore all the other fields if you want). You have created a new
paragraph style in a second or less.
Then just set any of the attributes in any of the tabs to what you
want, just as you would do with direct formatting. Select some
paragraphs, double-click on the style, and it is applied to those
paragraphs. Modify the style, and the paragraphs change accordingly.
Very quick, very fast, very intuitive, once you've done it a few
times. No worry about why an effect being turned on in one place is
being turned off in another.
I just tried this on a document and it didn't work as the formatting
didn't change to the default format even though the status bar show
Default.
I did not describe how to change the "Default" paragraph format.
How would the creation of a new style to change the "Default" paragraph
style or any other style?
Select some paragraphs and then double-click on your new style in the
Stylelist to apply your new style to those paragraphs. You should then
not see the status bar show the name of your new paragraph style when
the cursor is within one of the paragraphs to which you have applied it.
If want to change the "Default" style, just select modify in the
Stylelist for the "Default" character style, and then change the
"Default" style and all the paragraphs in the "Default" style will
change, except ... and this is important, when you have applied direct
formatting on top of the underlying styles.
What else. You don't want special effects like bolding and italics or
font changes *within* a paragraph to vanish because you have changed the
underlying font. To put it in Word Perfect terms, when you change a
paragraph style the paragraph display as though you inserted a bunch
new codes at the beginning of each paragraph in place of the old ones,
but any following control codes within that paragraph are left alone.
Accordingly what you see may be far more determined by these following
codes.
I still have to find the font and spacing issue that was
changed in a style but after setting the default style, the font issue
is still present. But what I did confirm that one of may major issues
with importing documents has been related to a style that the default
style doesn't fix.
Possibly this is overlying direct formatting or an overlying character
style. If you set the Stylelist to show character styles, then the
character style at the current cursor position will be highlighted in
the list. You can then edit that style. If the style doesn't change in
the list when visually you see a change within a paragraph, such as a
font change or a change from non-bold to bold, then direct formatting
has been applied.
To see the underlying paragraph formatting in a paragraph just do
CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE to remove all but the basic paragraph style formatting
in that paragraph. After you've seen what this shows, you can press
CTRL-Z to put the character style formatting and direct formatting back
again.
Jallan
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
