Johnny Andersson wrote:
So yes, I use styles all the time and I just love it, but there are a
lot of
things about them to improve. However, just a few improvements (the most
important ones) would probably mean a huge improvement to the intuitiveness
of the product.
I, too, use styles extensively when I write but I find myself being
frustrated and confounded at times. I believe the proximate cause of the
problem is that the styles paradigm in Writer conflates different
concepts which are in fact orthogonal and should be handled through
separate, parallel, mechanisms.
1. Document Organization -- Lists, Numbering, Outlines, Sections,
Headings, etc.
2. Language selection.
3. Semantic Markup -- Designating portions of text as having some
meaning beyond the actual words. Think of a Linux textbook with
commands, user input, program output, and explanatory text having
different appearances.
4. Presentation -- Font, Size, Color, Margins, Indentation, etc.
Of the above categories, number 4 and, to a certain extent, number 1 are
the only ones which, in my mind, fall under the paradigm of a "Style".
Maybe it's just the word (or maybe it has something to do with having
just watched "The Devil Wears Prada"), but when I hear the word "Style"
I think of appearance and presentation. Semantic mark-up affects
appearance only indirectly--and not at all if you so choose--but it's
lumped in under the same mechanism for making things pretty.
Mr. Blake often mentions having a template with over a 1,000 named
styles. Well, how much of that amounts to populating a matrix with the
above categories as the dimensions? Most of it I would guess. And in the
final analysis, how much better is that than direct formatting? Choosing
styles from that list would be like typing in Chinese for me; I would
find it very confusing just trying to name all those styles and keep
them straight.
When you dig down deep enough into this issue, it seems to me that the
root cause is that we have a program feature that's designed from the
programmer's perspective rather than the user's perspective. AFAICT, the
"things" you can apply a style to are just those objects that are
manipulated internally -- characters, paragraph objects, page objects,
etc. -- solely because the properties of those objects are available
rather than because those objects are the "correct" place to specify the
property.
That's why I would like to see more style categories: Word styles
certainly, and perhaps Sentence/Phrase styles, Section Styles, and
Document Styles. With style categories at every logical hierarchy level,
the application of the above four styling concepts could be applied in a
more logical fashion.
Document Styles would be akin to switching templates but more intuitive
perhaps.
Section Styles would take over a lot of the work currently performed at
the Page Style level and allow you to create named styling for sections
where currently you only have direct formatting.
Word Styles would assume a lot of the work currently performed at the
character level, particularly language setting. Does it really make much
sense to specify a different language for a particular character?
Granted, when you get into languages that use non-Latin character sets
it makes more sense but then it's the properties of the words that are
dictating the character rather than the other way around. For that
matter how often do you format a single character differently than the
word in _any_ way?
I would treat character styling as a resource or reference style that
would be chosen to apply to higher levels. IOW, instead of directly
specifying character properties in the paragraph style you would choose
the character style (primarily font and size) that you wished to apply
to the paragraph from a drop box.
Sentence/Phrase styling is a bit more speculative. The main purpose I
see at that level would be language specification and perhaps a grammar
style (formal, informal, military, etc.) to be used in grammar checking.
While I'm on the subject, semantic markup could be useful in
spell/grammar checking to designate, for instance, proper nouns and such
("New York City", "John Hurt", "Debra Messing") to lighten the load on
the AI required for that kind of work.
I'm truly sorry for using so many words. The reason for it is that my
English sucks. There are so many words I don't know, so I have to use the
few words I know, which cause this overflow of words. Once again, I'm sorry
for that.
Johnny Andersson
Please, don't apologize. Your English is certainly far superior to my
(totally non-existent) Swedish (or whatever your native tongue is, I'm
just guessing from your name).
Rod
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