Rod Engelsman wrote:
Robin Laing wrote:
The attributes supplied by styles can be overwritten by user-applied
direct formatting, and in some cases by other user applied styles. We
know this.
And these can be hard to find. A RC style viewer or at least reveal
formatting points may make life much better in these cases for people
like me.
Robin, It's statements like this that make me believe that you still
don't quite understand the differences between the WP code/tokens and
Writer/Word object styles. You say you understand that Writer has no
codes to reveal, but then you seem to just rename them "pointers" and
continue with the same concept.
Fair comment. I have tried to past text within a style but kept
missing the end style pointer on my paste. Sometimes pasting within
the document and then moving the end text. Lost productivity.
Here we go with the "pointers" again. Just codes/tokens under a
different name and Writer doesn't have any of those. The closest thing
to that would be the end-of-paragraph marker. The EOP marker is
considered to be a part of the paragraph whose end it marks.
When this was first mentioned to me, I thought, how does Writer know
that when it displays X.odt it should put this word as bold and this
paragraph as hanging indent? I unzipped a test.odt and saw that there
are pointers (not tokens) to formatting definitions.
I have actually taken this simple multi formatted document that has
used styles and direct formatting and looked at it. In the
content.xml the properties of the various blocks of text like this one
that I copied from one content.xml.
<text:span text:style-name="T2">BOLD</text:span>
These are the pointers that I am talking about. Not tokens that say
that this text is bold but a pointer to the definition which says.
</style:style><style:style style:name="T2"
style:family="text"><style:text-properties fo:font-weight="bold"
style:font-weight-asian="bold"
style:font-weight-complex="bold"/></style:style>
This is copied from a simple test.odt file. This is from a line and
this word has been directly formatted to be BOLD.
So... for example, if you have copied a paragraph from another document
and are trying to paste it into another document between two paragraphs
with different styles, and you want the style of the pasted paragraph to
match that of the _first_ paragraph then it needs to be pasted in ahead
of the paragraph mark. If it needs to match the second paragraph paste
it _after_ the paragraph mark. Do these paste operations as Paste
Special -> Unformatted Text.
There are so many ways to do things but in most cases, it is easier to
grab the formatted text and paste it as it is. Then do the cleanup
after. This is how I normally have to work as I usually either have
to follow a document format that someone else has setup and insert my
various forms of data or import data from other sources into a
document that I have created which is very rare.
As my wife said, she doesn't think of how things will be formatted
until it is mostly written. This is because things are always added,
moved or deleted during the creation of the document. Formatting is
finalized at the end. Sometimes what will be added may not be known
until the final day.
You are obviously having problems. So provide details of one at least
of the problems, not undetailed references to things that don't work
the way you are trying to make them work. The interface you describe
won't help in such matters, as it still wouldn't show anything that
is not seeable now by looking at the formatting dialog boxes for the
current object.
The example I have used is verticle text in an imported document. I
spent two or three days trying to get it sorted out. I never did. I
ended up having to use Word.
Was it like normal but turned on its side, or was it like
t
h
i
s
?
This is exactly how it was formatted. I looked at everything I could
find to clear this up. I couldn't find a style or margin setting that
was changed. I thought it may have been columns setup but that wasn't
it either.
If the former, it would be rotated text which is a property of
characters, paragraphs, or frames. If the latter, it would have had to
have been a funky indentation setting, or it could have been in a very
skinny frame or table cell.
I tried changing everything I could think of, even to the point of
deleting all the text but with no success. I never found out the
problem as I ended up using XP and Word for the document. I have not
had to touch it since.
And another that I have is "Flashing Text" The style is Header 1
which is used many times in this document. This is the only one that
flashes. Now I do know that the author has used allot of direct
formatting within this document because if I apply the Header 1 style,
it will change the look of line. This is where a different style
should have been used. Now if I could only fully reformat the
document. Not an option though.
Flashing is a (very annoying) character effect that could only be
applied via styles or direct formatting of Paragraphs or Characters.
Only a couple of places to look for that one.
Four styles show up in the Applied Styles box. Caption, Default,
Heading 1 and Normal (Web). If I click on the line, the Heading 1
becomes highlited and Default under character Styles.
Now if I could get all the styles in effect at this location displayed
at once. No other styles are highlited. Now to compound things, the
line has been modified from the Heading 1 actual settings.
I'd like those dialog boxes improved by just making them non-modal.
I'd like also to see the underlying style formatting also in those
boxes. I'd like lots of improvements.
But meanwhile, I honestly don't find slows me down noticeably. The
formatting at any point is usually obvious without opening these
dialogs, and I can use the formatting broom to select formatting from
one place and paste it over another without worrying about what the
formatting is, if I don't want to.
I do agree but the Reveal Codes has been brought up so many times over
the years.
I have messages from 2003 on this. The RC issue was created in
2002-Mar-07.
I will acknowledge that a "Full" RC implementation is not possible
within OOo. But a compromise that allows a more readable and handy
indication of property changes is achievable. The benefit of
discussion is options open to how things can be achieved.
As long as you understand that any solution will have to be consistent
with the Writer document model and will likely look and act very little
like the RC you're familiar with.
I totally agree that it has to work in Writers present form. This is
because Writer and ODF are so similar in their context. This is why I
suggested a code display similar to non-printing characters where the
< span:xxx > pointers are. Then when someone is going through a
document, they will be able to glance at a screen and see that there
is a formatting change between two letters within a word that was
caused by a copy or paste from another document or section where the
styles or direct formatting was close but different. Just another
menu option under view. ie. Reveal formatting points.
A dialog box that would allow you to put the cursor at that location
and show what styles are in effect within the tree.
Page:
Paragraph:
Text:
and the rest.
Yes. But if others have different ideas about what is better ... ?
And I rather expect that many of your WP users wouldn't care at all
for your idea.
No doubt but an option that provide a closer to WP tool for formatting
information would be a start in the right direction.
Not really. The paradigms that the two programs use is regarding styles
and direct formatting is almost 180 degrees different. Wordperfect uses
direct formatting to simulate styles and Writer uses Styles to simulate
direct formatting.
Any tools that are to be proposed or implemented need to deal directly
with the way things are instead of some simulation. I would suggest:
1. A tool to create all existing combinations of Names Styles and direct
formatting into new named styles. So if you applied some formatting
directly onto a Styled paragraph it would create a new style of a
different name.
2. A tool to side-by-side compare, reconcile, and merge styles.
3. A right-click option in the Stylist to highlight in some manner all
instances of a chosen style.
Combined with the existing tools, such as Search and Replace Styles and
the other tools I mentioned in another post, you could efficiently clean
up the formatting of even long, complex documents.
More tools, give me more tools. :)
--
Robin Laing
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
