On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 21:46, John Kaufmann wrote:
> that I was *quoting* (admittedly with a sense of recognition) from page 20 of > the Writer guide 0208WG3-WorkingWithGraphics.odt, that "the positioning of > graphics is often rather time-consuming and may be very frustrating for > [even] experienced users." IOW, I'm hardly alone in that impression. And you'll note that the group that wrote that article does _not_ consistently use styles, but resorts to manual formatting --- a condition that is known to cause havoc with frame placement. As such, frustration is what you _should_ expect. > That may indeed be part of the problem. I will admit to some irritation at > an OO tendency to adopt styles automagically, but then I'm still learning how > to turn off those things. What you should get rid of, is the formatting toolbar, and only use Stylist. That you end up with 25K styles is irrelevant. The results will still be predictable, and containable. > However, the fact that styles can be invoked without being "explicitly used" > seems to me an argument *for* a tool to examine formatting, rather than > against it. That functionality is present as a bone to those who point blank refuse to learn how to use the tools that they are given. A bone that should be withdrawn from them, because it only serves to cripple, handicap and inflict computer illiteracy and incompetence on them. > My question was about a document which I wrote from scratch - 10-12 pages A document that includes manual formatting. > But what if I *had* been editing something from someone else? In what > possible universe would one say that the only proper way to edit that > document's formatting is to "restart to write the document from scratch"? The same universe that has held as conventional wisdom, for at least two decades, that manual formatting is guaranteed to wreck havoc on the document. If the document used no manual formatting, then the issue won't exist. (And yes, I'm speaking form experience, having added 26K images to a document of almost that many pages.) > How does that attitude advance the word processor over the typewriter? Manual formatting insists on treating a word processor as a typewriter. > Again, why argue against any tool that highlights hidden format constraints? The so-called hidden format constraints are there only because one is not paying attention to what one is doing. > o I did not mention WordPerfect; you did. I did say that I find merit in a Inasmuch as Reveal codes is touted as a WordPerfect bug, you did bring it up. > was introduced), WP was always among the most bug-free of major applications Inasmuch as it was the wordperfect developers that admitted that reveal codes was forced on them, due to the show stopping bugs that they couldn't fix, it is patently obvious that they knew of those bugs, and that they also knew that they could not fix them. jonathon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.org
