On 24/03/2006, at 4:59 PM, Ross Johnson wrote:
On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 14:50 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote:
SNIP!
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 can't see a "lot" of work needing to be done here by OOo. :)
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?
It is something that probably could be done I would think. I know
that for text, it will fill in the Find text box with any selected
word etc. I would assume it could do similar with formats. If it does
not, I would suggest you lodge a RFE to have it done.
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.
OK. Based on your tag-based example, we are looking again at the
hierarchy structure that I have already recommended. There could be
one problem here however. I think the only problem would be whether
there is a practical difference between hard formatting and styles.
For example, lets assume that your tags represent character styles
that have been applied. What happens if I then hard format some text
within that style? How will that affect the hierarchy and the ability
to choose? When clicking on the text should it select the style or
the hard formatting, particularly if both have been applied (not
unlikely)?
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.
Based on your previous example I think you mean "no" here. What I
meant was that when you click on the word "colour" in your example,
it would select all "<b>" styled text in the document, not just at
that "level" of the hierarchy.
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.
Do the RFE ;)
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.
You could probably do a simple selection by clicking macro to perform
what you want and then tie it to a keyboard shortcut or icons.
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.
Suprisingly, many of the formatting options do apply styles. I agree
with your sentiment on both points in that they should use styles,
but it is more for familiarity for existing users. For example, doing
Format > Page is all based on styles.
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.
That RFE is looking really good! :)
Regards
Jonathon
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