On 14/5/14 at 4:12 AM, bbyfi...@axion.net (Bruce Byfield) wrote:
On Wednesday 14 May 2014 05:29:45 PM Brian Barker wrote:
At 23:38 14/05/2014 +1000, Marina Tadiello wrote:
In general, and from a user's perspective, Styles are one example of
how common users are encouraged (or forced? :-) to think ("program")
and behave like computers.
Yes, manual formatting is available. But using it is kind of
perverse, because it means doing more work than necessary, and
cutting yourself off from important features.
Mh, this really depends.
Here's how I describe manual formatting in the introduction to
the book I'm in the middle of completing:
"Office suites are as old as the personal computer. Yet, after
more than thirty years, few of us have bothered to learn how to
use them.
"Oh, we have learned how to get things done in them. Most of us
can format a document and print it out, after a fashion. But
what we haven't learned is to do these things efficiently,
taking advantage of all the tools that are available.
"It is as if we have learned enough about cars to go down hill
in them and coast across level ground, but never learned about
the ignition. We get things done, but with more effort and less
efficiency that we should. Some tasks, like going uphill, we
don't imagine are even possible because of our limited view."
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm simply asking that user
perspective is taken into consideration at least as much as the
programmer's own.
The starting point ought always to be that computers are there
to aid humans. And not all humans take to computing as well as
programmers do. It's just obvious to me - why should it sound so
"strange" to programmers? :-)
Also, your comments do not address the main point in my message,
which was about "revealing codes" for document options that go
beyond plain styling.
marina
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