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True: (Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+M) 
Had something similar ages back when teaching a beginning web
development class on the topic of CSS. Students went wide-eyed. I then
let them play with CSS for the next half hour. They loved it!
Hi Dave,
Dave Liesse schrieb:
As an end user, I'd like to ask one follow-up question to your third
point. This is an "I don't understand" type of question, by the way,
not a challenge.Are you implying that if I want to, say, indent one paragraph with no
other changes, I should create a new style for that? Seems like a lot
of work since it can be done with one mouse clicks (or, if I ever get
around to learning how to create shortcut keys, one keystroke
combination) plus navigating to the paragraph.(Just for the record, the indent and outdent keystrokes are probably the
thing I miss most from MS Word, and there's not much that I miss.)
Your change in format has a textual reason. Therefore it is likely, that this is not the only paragraph, where you have to use this format. So yes, you should make a style from it. But that is very easy and quickly done:
Do all formatting you want to this paragraph as direct (hard) formatting. Then from the drop down list of the right button in the Styles&Formatting window choose "New Style from Selection". Enter the name of the new style, OK. That's all.
The item says 'from Selection', but for a paragraph style there is no need to select something. It is sufficient, that the cursor is inside the paragraph.
The new style has as parent the old style of the paragraph. It contains only those settings, which you have applied in addition. Therefore it fits well into the parent-child hierarchy.
The new style is applied to this paragraph and the formats you had applied are removed as direct formatting. Therefore the formatting of this paragraph will adapt too, if you later on modify the style.
Kind regards
Regina
Personally, I think this is the wrong way to approach the problem. I would start with *why* you want to indent the paragraph. What a lot of people do, without ever being conscious of it, is use visual appearance to communicate structural information. I start with the structural information (What is this object doing here on the page? What is its purpose?), and then I can add any visual formatting to it that I need. So if the indent is used to denote a quoted passage form another source (a very common usage), I would create a style for the *quotation*, and give it the attribute of indentation. And I would save it in my Default Template because I'm pretty sure this won't be the last time in my life that I need to do quoted passages. And if I have a long document with a number of objects, I can change the appearance of the quoted passages without affecting anything else. This is something the authors of the Writer documentation really understand, but it is a new way of thinking for most people.
Regards,
Hi Virgil,
4. Document collaboration is a real bugaboo. We lawyers share documents
repeatedly. I would create a document using styles, and send it off to a
colleague for further edits. I would get it back with a mess of styles
and direct formatting. I see no answer to this conundrum, simply because
our programs allow so many different ways of accomplishing the same
tasks, and I couldn't expect a colleague to listen to my styles tutorial
when all he wanted to do was make a small edit to my proposed contract.
Exactly. Try maintaining consistency when drafting a consortium contract
between 7 or 8 parties, using MS Word, LO or OOo, and see what the
document ends up like - a complete disaster !
Alex
Alex wrote,
4. Document collaboration is a real bugaboo. We lawyers share documents
repeatedly. I would create a document using styles, and send it off to a
colleague for further edits. I would get it back with a mess of styles>and direct formatting. I see no answer to this conundrum, simply because
>our programs allow so many different ways of accomplishing the same
>tasks, and I couldn't expect a colleague to listen to my styles tutorial
>when all he wanted to do was make a small edit to my proposed contract.Exactly. Try maintaining consistency when drafting a consortium contract
between 7 or 8 parties, using MS Word, LO or OOo, and see what the
document ends up like - a complete disaster !
I never even try to share documents between different programs, such as Word and LO or OO. Even though they may be "compatible," that is an relative concept. There are so many subtle difference between the way the programs handle document files that I found it futile to try to convert from one to the next. Thus, in my law office, my computer had Word, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect all installed. Even today, many lawyers still use WordPerfect, so I could adapt to whatever my counterpart was using.
Virgil
I never even try to share documents between different programs, such
as Word and LO or OO.
I never even try to share documents between two users using both the
same program *and* the same document template, if the program is Word
(or LO /OO). With these applications, the re-use of content is
exclusively limited to raw, unformatted text. Trying anything else will
drive you up the walls.
If you need collaborative authoring, you need something that
*imposes* a pre-defined document structure (such as e.g. an XML
schema, LaTeX document classes unfortunately are not as restrictive) and
thus absolutely locks out *any* possiblity of "finger-painting", and
preferrably something that also provides seamless integration for
revision control systems such as e.g. Subversion.
With LyX/LaTeX, structured XML authoring applications (or some document
processing applications like Worperfect or Framemaker, provided the
authors are perfectly disciplined), collaborative authoring is
possible to a certain degree.
With Word (or LO/OO) it is strictly impossible at any reasonable
degree of efficiency.
If there was a way in LO/OO to imperatively re-strict the user interface
for a certain document to the application of styles defined within the
document, this might improve things, but given how styles are
implemented in LO/OO, I doubt that it would really work. Besides that
styles don't hold structure information anyway, since templates aren't
schemas in LO/OO.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
I never even try to share documents between different programs, such
as Word and LO or OO.I never even try to share documents between two users using both the
same program *and* the same document template, if the program is Word
(or LO /OO). With these applications, the re-use of content is
exclusively limited to raw, unformatted text. Trying anything else will
drive you up the walls.
your walls must be very adhesive. I share documents with people all the time because a couple of committees I've been on had me as the 'master of documents', that is, I would take other people's work and bundle it together, edit and produce drafts for them to work on, then I would do up the final report. they almost always are using some version of Word.
sure, there are problems but my walls are pretty footprint-free. but I think this goes to show not only are there different standards of tolerance for problems, there different magnitudes of problems, thus, if I were dealing with 100 people instead of six or seven, it might be a different issue.
of course I'm not denying there are other solutions which are technically superior in some way. but for many of us the situation is not as dire as you paint it, walls and all.
F.
Hi
A big
+1
to that.
Regards from
Tom
But surely that's different? You've been appointed to "do up the final report", so you can do what you like with the final text - even just taking it out as plain text and reformatting from scratch. The earlier conversations where about situations where all members of a collaboration had equal rights to impose formatting - and where the formatting itself was perhaps a relevant point of discussion and agreement.
Where it is appropriate, what you describe is indeed the way to go: to develop and agree on the content separately from the format. The format is either locked down from the start or imposed separately at the end. That's what intelligent web authoring arrangements use, of course.
Brian Barker
Hi
Exactly!
It's like driving an automatic car rather than a gear-shift one but with the option to use gear-shift if&when you choose to.
Most people are more familiar with worrying about what to do right now and with keeping all their previous choices in their head. The idea of surrendering that to an automated process so they can just get on with the writing is even quite scary to people.
However, automatics are catching on. One lass at work even has it as 1 of her "must haves" when choosing a new car.
Regards from
Tom
I share documents with people all the time because a couple of committees I've been on had me as the 'master of documents', that is, I would take other people's work and bundle it together, edit and produce drafts for them to work on, then I would do up the final report. they almost always are using some version of Word.
But surely that's different? You've been appointed to "do up the final report", so you can do what you like with the final text - even just taking it out as plain text and reformatting from scratch. The earlier conversations where about situations where all members of a collaboration had equal rights to impose formatting - and where the formatting itself was perhaps a relevant point of discussion and agreement.
I am confused. Wolfgang spoke of two users. but granted that would also be a problem if each user claims the prerogative to determine formatting. most occasions I encounter no one claims such a prerogative, each goes their own way, but also most people I deal with don't do any significant formatting to start with.
so what is the context of discussion?
a) several individuals passing documents to and fro and
b) each with a lot of formatting and
c) each preferring their own formatting to others'?
this indeed is a 'war of all against all' but then it's less a matter of word-processor vs latex or something but a problem of organization and coordination.
Where it is appropriate, what you describe is indeed the way to go: to develop and agree on the content separately from the format. The format is either locked down from the start or imposed separately at the end. That's what intelligent web authoring arrangements use, of course.
sorry if I was off topic.
F.
I tend to agree with Wolfgang on this one.
I think the difference for Felmon is that you are the "master of documents." Sounds like its your job to clean up everyone's mess and you seem to get the final say on how the document will be structured. In the legal arena, it's rare that one person will be the "master." Rather, you have a bunch of individuals, plus their administrative assistants all adding to the confusion. The "master" is the person who performs the final edit.
The obvious "problem" is that there are simply too many different ways of accomplishing a task with our "one size fits all" office suites. Want it to work like a typewriter? You can do that. Want it to work like a typesetting printing press? You can do that, too.
In the world of DOS, we all had to learn how our programs worked. Then as GUIs became popular, programs expanded to allow many different ways of working. In 2007, MS added yet another method with the Ribbon.
It would be great to use a more structured environment like LyX/LaTeX. But, the learning curve there is so steep that I can't imagine any business professional having the patience to learn it.
Virgil
I am confused.
Oh, don't be!
so what is the context of discussion?
a) several individuals passing documents to and fro and
b) each with a lot of formatting and
c) each preferring their own formatting to others'?this indeed is a 'war of all against all' but then it's less a matter of word-processor vs latex or something but a problem of organization and coordination.
Yes: that's indeed probably where word processors are less than up to the task.
sorry if I was off topic.
Not at all: you weren't. It's just that there is less of a problem if the last person is permitted to do whatever s/he wishes.
Brian Barker
Hi, Virgil,
I've just read this entire thread start to finish.
If I'm correct, you're looking for a way to encourage/convince/cajole/ (name your poison here! LOL) to use styles and formatting.
No one has suggested an economic argument. <grin>
Give them a hypothetical scenario of some kind, possibly like this...
Ask them if anyone is interested in doing some typing and/or document formatting on the side? Tell them they will be paid "by the piece", not "by the hour". They will be paid $25 per finished document.
Now ask them, would they be happy with doing 2 documents an hour and make $50? My guess is, most will say yes. Now propose this... "What if I showed you a way to do 4 documents an hour and make $100?"
I'll bet no one says no, and hopefully you've got them hooked.
Great idea as long as I'm not the one paying the $25 per document.
Virgil
Hi
At my work place they have just run a 3 month training course in MS Office 2010. We are 2 months in and people still don't know how to select a printer or turn the machine on or off. The tutor has to do all that. I was also expecting a few to teach me how to place images to get the flexibility that LibreOffice gives me but they don't know how to get an imagine in let alone how to set it up or move it around.
One or 2 do have skills and 1 of those has talked about going on the course himself but for the most part people just don't know and have trouble learning.
If only the course had been about LibreOffice they would all be so much more skilled and flexible. As it is they are stumped if facing something as different as MSO 2007.
Regards from
Tom
Hi
In MS Office styles are an excessive waste of time. You just have to accept
that documents will have changing fonts, bullet-point sizes, misnumbering
> in lists and even changes in language used by spell checkers.
Are you saying the styles area a waste of time, or Office? LOL
When I first got started with Office, and got into styles, the program was a total mess. Often I couldn't even save a doc without Word crashing, and way too many times, I would lose half of a document. Sometimes, I even had to start over.
Then a new version came out, and things worked pretty good, and once I got a handle on styles and formatting there, I can't say I had any problems. I'm talking about writing various in house plans. It was also an Office only environment.
LO, on the other hand, baffles me more than Word ever did. I have to own up to not working very hard with styles and formatting yet. Have no reason to learn it, and haven't taken the time to just sit down with it.
But, just last night, found an issue with outlines in the current version. And it's a situation that should never have happened, and should have been fixed long ago. I've seen enough of these recurring things that I've started looking at alternatives, including commercial suites.
As I noted in private email, LO still has not assigned two bugs I filed to anyone yet. They are classified a low priority. As I mentioned, the issues are *not* low priority to me, so if they don't want to fix them, I'll pay for a program where the developers do care to fix the low priority issues.
In LibreOffice just start by using the default ones. Don't even set-up new ones. Instantly
> you see a rise in quality and productivity. Then show how changing the defaults ripples
> through the whole document but keeps it looking very high quality.>
The problem is that people have become so accustomed to the poor quality of documents
> that anyone insisting on higher quality is seen as a fuddy-duddy, someone to ignore and
> ridicule even if that person is in authority.
+1
<snip>
Hi
At my work place they have just run a 3 month training course in MS Office
> 2010. We are 2 months in and people still don't know how to select a printer
> or turn the machine on or off. The tutor has to do all that. I was also
> expecting a few to teach me how to place images to get the flexibility that
> LibreOffice gives me but they don't know how to get an imagine in let alone
> how to set it up or move it around.
This sounds to me like you have a class of students who need to be taught computer basics before being sent to an Office class.
One of my other personal gripes about today's computer users and some employers.
<snip>
Hi,
I use styles as much as I can, just to achieve consistent formatting, to say nothing of time saving.
I find that most people I know who use word processors as a (barely glorified) typewriter are those who are most resistant to using styles.
Andrew