To comment on the following update, log in, then open the issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959
------- Additional comments from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Feb 12 11:21:22 +0000 2008 ------- Thanks to all the people who took the time to respond to my comment. I apologize for the length of this comment but hopefully it is well argued. I think what I had in mind was somewhat simpler than some of the follow-up comments. I think Writer should be able to import and export FreeMind maps. I feel this functionality would provide great benefits for Writer users, and would be a great selling point for Writer too. Let me explain. Professor Allin Cottrell from the Department of Economics at Wake Forest University wrote this great online piece from which I quote (hopefully this is fair use): 8<---- Preparing printable text using a word processor effectively forces you to conflate two tasks that are conceptually distinct and that, to ensure that people's time is used most effectively and that the final communication is most effective, ought also to be kept practically distinct. The two tasks are 1. The composition of the text itself. By this I mean the actual choice of words to express one's ideas, and the logical structuring of the text. The latter may take various forms depending on the nature of the document. It includes matters such as the division of the text into paragraphs, sections or chapters, the choice of whether certain material will appear as footnotes or in the main text, the adding of special emphasis to certain portions of the text, the representation of some pieces of text as block quotations rather than as the author's own words, and so on. 2. The typesetting of the document. This refers to matters such as the choice of the font family in which the text is to be printed, and the way in which structural elements will be visually represented. Should section headings be in bold face or small capitals? Should they be flush left or centered? Should the text be justified or not? Should the notes appear at the foot of the page or at the end? Should the text be set in one column or two? And so on. The author of a text should, at least in the first instance, concentrate entirely on the first of these sets of tasks. That is the author's business. 8<---- Available: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html Now I don't take quite the hard line that Prof Cottrel does regarding word processors. Writer is extremely powerful for (2) and it can do much more than mentioned in the quoted paragraph. However FreeMind is the most powerful tool I have been able to find for (1) - more powerful than a standard outliner because: (i) Every paragraph/element is a node. (ii) Maps can be filtered using attributes, e.g., you can display only quotations, or only paragraphs that need cleaning up, etc. (iii) Users can add icons and physical styles so as to be able to immediately distinguish structural elements e.g. quotations, sections and subsections. (iv) You have granular control over the display of your data. No other program lets me view all of section 1.2, section 3.2.4, headings only for sections 5 & 6, and my notes/spare prose on another node - *all in the same window.*. (v) All these elements can be dragged and dropped to anywhere else. To move a paragraph up in FreeMind, I press control+up. To conclude, FreeMind import/export—for which a lot of the work has already been done by the FM developers—would promote the use of FM for mode (1), and Writer for working in mode (2) as well as heaps of other stuff, including indexing and the eventual archiving and exchange of the document. FM import/export would provide this power to Writer users quickly, and without the need for extensive work on Writer. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
