Jim Allan wrote:
Robin Laing wrote:
I have a passion for Reveal Codes, even after learning styles and how
OOo works. They are a great tool and can be very useful when creating
documents from start to finish.
I am at a loss for words.
Didn't mean to have that affect. :)
But when working with various documents from different people and OS's
and editor programs, styles can blow up in your face.
Totally agreed. But they are better than arbitrary direct formatting. At
least one can change multiple parts of the document more quickly if the
document uses styles.
I do agree. Reveal codes can help move things to a standard without
having to delete all the formatting and then reformatting. Section at a
time.
It would be okay if you could delete all styles and start from scratch
but that isn't an option in most cases. Lack of control on documents
if forcing many in my work to move to LaTeX as WordPerfect isn't one
of the "preferred" applications anymore. The number of new LaTeX
books that I have seen on peoples desks are surprising. (I am
checking the LaTeX features of OOo.)
You can’t so far as I know, convert ODT to LaTeX or LaTeX to ODT. If
LaTeX does seem to you superior, for what you are doing, then I think
you should use it. But a vague reference to “lack of control” is not
convincing. What lack of control is found in OpenOffice.org? What
difficulty is there in searching out the properties at any position in
the text?
I have a link for a OOo Latex macro that I have yet to try.
http://ooolatex.sourceforge.net/
Control is a issue with placement of items within a document. FWIW, the
issue is much worse with MS word that OOo as reported by people that
have moved to OOo.
As I suggested on 3395, a method of seeing where the code changes
occur in the XML file would be a very nice compromise. When you
import a document that came from someone else, it would make finding
that strange style (from the import) that is affecting other parts of
the document. The reveal "non printing characters" doesn't do the trick.
Well, you can always load the XML as source and print it out or view it
on the screen. But there is indeed no reason that I can see why a “Show
last saved source” command could not be introduced into OpenOffice.org.
Source is a complicated way to look through these issues. If you have
ever really worked in reveal codes, it is not like looking through the
source. It is nice to have the reveal codes window open in the document
while you go through it. You can scan things a lot quicker this way.
However, you can usually find things without pouring over source code.
Press F11. That will open the Style Catalog. You can find from there the
paragraph style, character style and page style of your current cursor
position. And you can then modify that style if you wish. Select Edit ->
Find & Replace... In the box that comes up select “More Options”. Click
on the “Search for Styles” box. You can find every place a particular
paragraph style is used by this method. Unclick it. Then use
“Attributes” or “Formatting” to find any place some formatting that
bothers you appears. You can then use the Style Catalog to see what
style is being used at that position.
Not the same thing and complicated. If it would show all the formats
that are used at a given location at the same time, it would be much
better. At present, if you go through a document, you have to check to
see if there are formatting changes in each of the different categories
that styles affect. Searching isn't useful if you don't know what is
causing the problem. Believe me, I have tried. I have had situations
where a formatting change was caused at a different location.
Much easier to see it in a dialog box that is part of the document that
covers all formatting/styles in one easy to see indicator. Move the
cursor through the document and see the changes as they occur.
I spent days tracing down an issue with a form that was imported into
OOo from Word where all the text in much of the form was one character
wide. It occurred in about 25% of the document and turned out to be a
formatting nightmare (translated from WordPerfect to Word to OOo over
years) with different formatting. Erasing all formatting changed so
much of the document that it was actually easier to trace down and edit
the formatting issues. The form had to be a clone of a printed form.
When doing this kind of checking, it often helps to change the style,
say changing the font color to green, then use Find & Replace... to look
for any green text. Once found, I can decide what I want to do with it.
Then change the color back from green in that style.
I don’t find it at all hard to search out styles.
If someone has done direct formatting on top of styles, I can remove all
direct formatting in an area, see if anything changes, then use CTRL-Z
to put it back, and start replacing it by character styles and paragraph
styles if I want.
The biggest issue is many documents are not created with styles in the
first place. Direct formatting is used by most of the people that I
work with. Heck, even mention styles to them (or what ever MS calls
them) is like talking to a brick wall. No formal training.
I have used the reveal codes macro and it has saved me time when
searching for the elusive formatting change.
Whereas I had it on my machine for a while, years ago, and never found
it of much use. I don’t need a code to tell me some text is bold, when I
can see that it is bold. And making sure styles are used almost
everywhere prevents hard-to-see font changes from being missed. If I
discover that at some place Times (Postscript) is being used instead of
Times New Roman, I can quick use Find & Replace... to locate all places
in the text where Times is being used. If the problem is a style which
uses Times, I can then change that style to use Times New Roman. If the
problem is direct formatting. I can globally replace all occurrences of
Times with Times New Roman, without worrying at all about where exactly
the passages start and end, without searching for codes.
Again, I don't argue with you on this. And this is why I think that
having the option to do both would make OOo the best tool in the world
for all users. Those that prefer Reveal Codes will stick with
applications that have that feature. I know people that get WordPerfect
here are work even though Word is provided on all Windows computers.
I don’t understand what elusive formatting changes you are talking
about. If it is, for example, different ways of indenting on paragraphs,
then change the style to remove indent, look for paragraphs that have
not changed to fit, do what it necessary to fix them, then reset the
indent in the style. I don’t need to worry about codes which don’t exist
in the first place.
Not a bad idea. I will have to try that. In the above example of the
form, the issue wasn't very obvious to the eye. I deleted some styles
and formatting but it was an effect caused by nesting of formatting.
Lannz reveal codes macro was a great tool for fixing this.
I have not used WordPerfect since 1999 and have used StarOffice or
OpenOffice since but I still would like to have a Reveal Codes ability.
I used WordPerfect much earlier, on the Commodore Amiga. I liked it. But
most of the errors I fixed by “Reveal codes” were errors caused by it
being very much a Control-code-based system which allowed non-matching
codes to exist in the text stream. I’ve never found myself seriously
wishing that MS Word or OpenOffice.org Writer had a “Reveal Codes” feature.
Jim Allan
My wife writes thousands of words daily and she still wants reveal
codes. She cannot see the use of creating styles for one-time
documents. I am still trying to change her mind. Some of her work
would benefit from using styles.
This whole discussion is a reflection on how people prefer to work.
Some web authors prefer and will work with the source code on a page,
entering their own tags using a text editor. Others prefer using a
WYSIWYG interface and have never looked at the tags in a web page they
have produced.
To add to this, css is like styles in OOo, make quick changes to a whole
site with a simple change to one simple file. On the other hand,
sometimes you have to look at the source to get things just as you want.
I will stick with the idea that OOo could at a tool to show all the
styles in use in relation to the cursor as a compromise to the reveal
codes. My comments are on the feature request.
--
Robin Laing
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