On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 14:50 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: > On 24/03/2006, at 1:45 PM, Ross Johnson wrote: > > > On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 12:22 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: > >> On 24/03/2006, at 9:46 AM, Ross Johnson wrote: > >> > >>> On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 09:23 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: > >>>> SNIP! > >>>> There seems to be two main improvements that have been suggested > >>>> that > >>>> does make sense with this thread: > >>>> > >>>> 1. Ability to see a structured layout of applied styles and hard > >>>> formatting, preferably as different types. > >>>> 2. Ability to move the cursor while the layout it displayed to see > >>>> how it changes under the cursor. > >>> > >>> Add: > >>> > >>> 3. Efficient and accurate selection based on styles. > >>> > >>> Once you have located what you're looking for, make it easier to > >>> select > >>> it so that it can be modified. Previously I suggested using crtl > >>> +multiple clicks to select style and formatting extents similar > >>> to how > >>> text (words, sentences and paragraphs) is currently selected. > >> > >> > >> Hi Ross, > >> > >> I am not sure what you mean here? You can select a style very easily > >> straight out of the Styles and Formatting Window? If you click on > >> some text that interests you, it will show the styles that are > >> applied. The only part that would be a problem is if you are using > >> hard formatting of some sort rather than styles. Is this was you mean > >> here? > > > > I can apply style (e.g. character style) straight form the stylist, > > but > > I must select text first. Selection is a weak link here. > > That makes sense to me. > > > It would be useful (because I've often wanted to do it myself) to be > > able to select a block of text that is homogeneously formatted. E.g. > > where I have a block of text like this paragraph *with some formatted > > text*, like the text between the '*'. > > OK. Working out way through here - you click and drag :)
Remember, we're looking to equal the [reported] efficiency of editing reveal codes using functionality that can be added to OOo's model. It's a pain to have to accurately position the cursor at the start and drag to the end precisely, especially if the font is small and proportional, when there are a lot of changes to make (in an existing document that was created by someone who did not use styles). > > Another example that I hope illustrates the general problem: suppose I > > have a sentence that contains some words from a second language, that > > is, where it is not obvious where it starts or ends. It may be some > > EN- > > US words in an EN-AU sentence like "show me the color of your money > > honey". How do I select just the EN-US formatted text? > > You select it through the styles. All the text using the EN-US style > can be selected using the Find&Replace dialog or can be altered > immediately by changing the style. Ah. Find&Replace (Format) works beautifully - thanks - but there is a lot of mundane work that OOo could do for me to make me more productive, keep me less fatigued, and allow me to remain focused on the [only slightly] broader task at hand. I see no reason why OOo can't fill in all the F&R format blanks for me according to the text that I actually click on, and then find all of the matching surrounding text? I see no reason why it can't expand the selection by working out the difference between the current formatting and the surrounding formatting and ignoring those differences. E.g.: Jack <b>jumped over the <i>candle</i> stick</b>. [The HTML style tags are just to make it clearer, I know these are objects with attributes that are being manipulated here] Using my fictitious shortcut: Ctrl+double-click on "candle" would select <i>candle</i>. Ctrl+double-click again on the already selected text would expand the selection to:- <b>jumped over the <i>candle</i> stick</b> Ctrl+double-click again on the already selected text would (in this case) select the paragraph style, that is, all contiguous surrounding paragraphs that match that style - not just the one paragraph. Each level would select what is most natural to select. Presumably, another ctrl+double-click would select all contiguous surrounding pages matching the current page style. There are some jumps here around the internal OOo object hierarchy I suspect, but from the users perspective, this might be what makes sense. > > If I could ctrl+double-click on the word "color" and have OOo > > select the > > entire extent of EN-US text for me, I might get just the one word, > > or a > > phrase, or the whole sentence, or several paragraphs. Then I would be > > able to change the character format to perhaps a different colour or > > something. I can't do that at present AFAIK except by using some > > arduous > > manual search to find the start and end, and then remember where they > > were. Another character example might be kerning only part of a word. > > Yet another might be an entire section of paragraphs whose style I > > want > > to modify. > > You want to click on some text and have it select ALL text associated > with the style? Yes. > Again, this is generally the functionality that is > available now using the Styles and Formatting Window or the > Find&Replace dialog? OOo can help me here too by filling in all the settings for me according what I actually click on. > It seems most of your examples are based on > character formats here, right? I'm trying to keep it general, but I'm forced to use specific examples. I'm really trying to argue that there are some shortcuts that could be included in OOo to make it much more productive. You've shown me how to do it the long way, and even more importantly, shown that the functionality it there in OOo already. Someone just needs to link it up to a set of keyboard+mouse operations combined with some internal data lookup. > Is the problem that you can't > distinguish between a character style and a paragraph style for the > same word? No. As described above. I see that OOo could help me to do things more easily and quickly and accurately, that it doesn't do at present. > If so, then simply adding an "Applied Character Style" > type dropdown similar to what is there for paragraphs would do this. > Is this what you mean? Ah well, if OOo Writer was really mean about styles, then it would not even include the character attribute icons on the Formatting toolbar. It would display style drop-lists ONLY - for page, paragraph, character etc. styles, and force everyone to work only with predefined styles. I think it would be unrecognisable as a word processor if it did. It would probably look more like LyX - the WYSIAWYG TeX editor. > > All this can be done now, but this whole discussion is about > > efficiency > > I think. > > Agreed. Just remember that not all users of OOo are ex-WP users. :) > This means that some people may find one solution efficient and > others not so efficient. Sure. I've never used WP but I would still like to see these shortcuts. To me that's what computers are for - to do all the hard yakka that I'm not interested in doing. The F&R format/style searching is really great with this, but why not take it all the way. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
