Hi Michael, everyone, Here's an experimental mockup of how style editing could work: http://clickortap.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/citrus-editing-styles/ <http://clickortap.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/citrus-editing-styles/>It changes a few things in an effort to be less daunting and more comprehensible to newbies. All the old features should still be there, though, just under different terminology.
2010/10/30 Michel Gagnon <mic...@mgagnon.net> > > Le 2010-10-28 17:45, RGB ES a écrit : >>> >>>> ... >>>> >>>> While direct formatting *seems* to be good on two page school reports, >>>> it is a nightmare when you need to create complex and well structured >>>> documents. >>>> Writer have a good tradition of tools that helps the build of complex >>>> documents (styles, styles and more styles!). >>>> What I would like to see instead of more direct formatting tools, is a >>>> redesign of the way styles are defined to easy the learning curve of >>>> new users. >>>> Relying on styles is Writer's trademark. I think we need to give even >>>> more power to this trademark instead of going the route of MSWord. >>>> ... >>>> >>> If you only teach your students to use direct formatting, they will >> only use direct formatting afterwards: If you want to teach them how >> to properly use Writer, you need to teach them the correct use of >> styles since the beginning. I know, it is not easy, but it is more >> difficult to correct bad habits afterwards... >> BTW, tabs inside paragraph styles makes a lot more sense than tabs as >> formatting characters... >> >> After all, *tab stops as direct formatting must be avoided on properly >> formatted documents* ... >> > > > I am puzzled as to why you want to avoid any direct formatting. I am a > power user and a great fan of style sheets; yet, as far as I am concerned, > the great strength of style sheets is when something needs to be repeatable. > So I will define paragraph styles, bullet styles and heading styles because > similar paragraph "configurations" will appear more than once in my > document. Likewise for legends or equations in a technical document. On the > other hand, tables rarely repeat themselves: number and width of columns > differ, some have text, others have numbers, etc. So a given style used in > Table 1 won't be useful anywhere else in my document. > So what do I do? I define a style for the table title and a font style for > column headers and for the content. However, I typically will add tabs > manually. > > Still it should be easier to understand how stylesheets work and how they > are written. And some functions should be added. Amongst improvements I > would like to see are: > – better interactions between bullet styles and regular paragraph styles > (or maybe a clearer explanation on how both work); > – partial character styles (and maybe partial paragraph styles): for > example, "Strong" (or "accented") might simply defined as "whatever > paragraph style and font styles are already applied" + Bold, and "note" > might be defined as "85% of height in grey"; > – links and dependencies between styles that work all the time (right now, > it is guess work); > – we should also be able to add a condition to an existing style, not just > a new one; > – the possibility of having a paragraph style followed by another one > should also work within cells, so the style used for column header would be > automatically followed by the one used for column content, for example; > – last but not least, page styles should be optionally linked to a base > style (i.e. margins of my first page could then be automatically modified > from the margins of my standard page). > > For compatibility, the same stylesheets should exist in Impress, with added > features linked to paragraph animation. Imagine the ease of transfer if a > "standard paragraph -- bullet 1 level 2" paragraph would contain all the > following: > – in Writer: font: Bodoni 10 pt; bullet: n-dash ; indents: 1p6, -1p6, 0; > spaces: 5pt, 0.95 li, 0; > – in Calc:... > – in Impress: font Helvetica Bold 16pt blue ; bullet: n-dash gold ; > indents: 3p, -3p, 0; spaces: 12pt, 1.1li, 0; visual effect: slide from left > in 2 seconds... > > -- > Michel Gagnon > Montréal (Québec, Canada) -- http://mgagnon.net > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: Email to > discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org<discuss%2bh...@documentfoundation.org> > Posting guidelines: http://netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html > Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ > *** All posts to this list are publicly archived *** > > -- -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es -- Unsubscribe instructions: Email to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines: http://netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived ***
