Problem with formatted text

users
#4

Hi :slight_smile:
In MS Office styles are an excessive waste of time.  You just have to accept that documents will have changing fonts, bullet-point sizes, mis-numbering in lists and even changes in language used by spell checkers.

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.

I recommend mentioning it briefly but move on swiftly.  You can't teach tricks to people that don't want to learn.  Perhaps have an "advanced class" where people have to pay per lesson as an extra for more detail on set topics, perhaps as arranged out-of-school lessons on an individual basis but make sure it's somewhere public.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Hello Virgil,

This is a very interesting thread you're opening and I'm glad to "meet" people having the very same concerns I've got for years.

I'd like to get some general opinions about paragraph styles.

I am a retired lawyer who led a local government law office. When I was
working at that office, I tried in vain to get my employees to use
paragraph styles. For them, styles were a bother to set up and maintain.
I love using them, but then I'm as much a word processor junkie as I am
an end-user.

Now, I teach a paralegal course in technology at my local university. I
recently spent three weeks teaching styles to my students and they have
resisted me all the way. My sense is that people just trying to get
their work done see paragraph styles as an nuisance, not appreciating
the amount of time they can save by investing a little at the beginning.

What about the rest of you. Do you use styles? Do you find that other
less-techy types avoid them?

I'm on that side as well. But my feeling is that you won't teach efficiently about styles to *end-users* if they don't get correctly crafted templates from the very beginning.

IOW, there are two sides to word-processors use: the writer side, on which most the users are, and the conception side where lies a very small crowd. IMO, only the latter need a deep knowledge about styles and templates. The formers only need (at first) to *use* the templates that are provided to them by conceptors. This way, they only have to bother to they actual job: writing. When they are used to the concepts and can see them at work on a daily basis, then the writers can grab the knowledge. Not at first.

Well, this is the way I think things should be set in any organisation.

I guess much of your failures wrt styles training are because you're trying to teach a technique that is way beyond the common user's needs and which requires a very steep learning curve (BTDTGTTS). This means that my way of training is template-centered: teach the basics of word-processing (3 hrs), then teach to use the template-s (1-3 hrs per template depending upon its complexity). Styles have to be shown and explained but through the template uses. One thing is: when a writer can use a correctly crafted template, s-he can use any template. The difficult part being to design a "correct" template.

As a summary, I'd say that the tool is a two-sided one, neither side being independant:

-> The tool is the software *and* the template.

My 2 euro-cents,

#6

Sounds as if you're referring to an outline;
           one composes his thoughts in an outline then writes the main
paragraph then the concluding paragraphs -
               [newspaper writing]
           or expands on each for prose writing -

       Well, from a reporter/writer's point of view ...
           oops, there I go again - off on another tangent :wink:

#7

I'd like to get some general opinions about paragraph styles.

I am a huge fan of paragraph styles, page styles, and character
styles. I wish they were more widely used.

It makes me wonder if there is a way to make them more accessible to people
less inclined to invest time in their technology as opposed to getting a
task done.

What I find useful when teaching about styles is to emphasise two
things: how it makes it easy to change the formatting of something
like section titles (change the style and all occurrences are changed)
and that by using styles a consistent look-and-feel is created which
makes documents look more professional.

#8

I have been using paragraph styles in specific and many of the styles in the Styles and Formatting Window. So much so that I dock this window at the left side of Writer. This goes back to OOo 1.02 as I was writing the Getting Started with Base Chapter in the Getting Started Guide. I extensively use list styles along with the associated paragraph styles. I have even modified the list styles to make them do what I want.
      Recently, I have been using Calibre to convert my writings to the ePUB format. The latter uses a style sheet for its formatting. Because the conversion from ODF to ePUB is not perfect, my experiences with styles permits me to make the changes I need in the ePUB style sheet.
      I also agree with a previous poster: templates are very important when using styles. I have 16 templates many of which that I have created and use. Each one contains its own set of styles (paragraph, character, lists, and page). A couple of them are for resumes that are suppose to be quite professional. I seem to remember a law firm had created its own template for their legal briefs to make sure its structure was exactly what was expected.
       Obviously, templates can take time to create. But once created, they can be real time savers. The only way I know to teach the importance of templates and styles is to have the students create a template with a complex layout using styles. Then have them create two papers with this layout without the use of styles. Then have them make two papers with this layout using the template. Let them determine which takes the least amount of time. Finally have them make a change in one of these papers by changing a style and then by changing things manually. See if they can even make all of the changes manually.
      Just some thoughts.

--Dan

#9

I'll admit to not using styles, but not so much because I don't want to. I've been using the various word processing programs since PCs were first produced, before the concept of styles. They came out shortly after, of course, but they got little or no attention in the limited technical press that I followed at the time. By the time they were in widespread use, I was pretty well entrenched in my ways.

I've tried reading the documentation on them, but (a) I never have the time to sit down and actually learn them and (b) the documentation isn't all it could be -- this goes for MS as well as OO/LO. The biggest problem I've had, and I still don't know the answer, is how to actually save the styles so they're available for any document. I don't like any of the defaults, but don't see the point of creating a style that is usable only in one document, so I just do all the hard-formatting I need (which may take up more disk space, but it's also a lot more flexible as far as I can tell).

I'm slowly catching on, but it's going to be a while.

#10

Great responses so far from everyone!

Dan, I like your idea of giving the students a project of doing a complex document with and without styles.

Virgil

#11

Where styles will really shine is to give the students a project of doing a complex document with and without styles and then ask them to change certain aspects to attain some consistent characteristic. Change all headings to XXX, indentation and font on all paragraphs to yyy, outline numbering to ZZZ and you will see the advantages.
Steve

#12

Have you read chapter 3, Using Styles and Templates, of the Getting Started Guide? It was written using a template containing all the styles that were needed. I use the same template to write several chapters of the Base Guide. It also contains what I need even though the topics are vastly different.

--Dan

#13

Just ran across it recently. I've skimmed the whole thing but haven't had the time to read it in detail and apply the knowledge (I'm a tax professional, but the season doesn't end exactly on 15 April!). Hope to find some time soon to devote to it.

Dave

#14

This whole business about forcing people to use "styles" reminds me of the "Green Belt" program that was introduced into
my business about 12 years ago. It required at least a week's work to just try and make a plan for the simplest project,
which, when the project was undertaken, would wind up scrapped anyway, since no-one can foresee everything. I don't
know what eventually became of this--it's one of the reasons I took retirement when I did. The green-belt Nazis and your
style Nazis should get along well with each other!

--doug

#15

Dave and Doug,

I appreciate, Dave, hearing your perspective as a true end user. Your sentiments are those I've heard from my employees. They just need to get a brief done and filed, and they don't have time to learn the styles.

Doug, obviously, nobody's trying to "force" styles on anyone. What I'm trying to do is find an effective way of persuading people that their lives would be so much better if they took the time to learn them.

It pains me to watch people mouse around a document going from paragraph to paragraph trying to get formatting consistent when all they need to do is make one change to a paragraph style and "voila", every paragraph having that style is automatically changed. Just today, one of my students was stunned to watch that work. "You mean I don't have to make the same change to every paragraph?" she asked.

It also pained me in my law office to see documents presented with no formatting consistency with paragraphs that are supposed to be the same looking haphazardly different.

There is a better way, and since a university pays me to teach students how to take advantage of modern technology, I feel it my duty to at least give it a college try to find a way to explain it to them.

Don't want to use it? Then, don't. Nobody here's going to "force" you to do it. If you want to take twice as long to create documents as it takes me (and have results that are not as good), go right ahead.

Virgil

#16

Virgil, I think it is great that you are trying to show your students
a better way. I don't understand why there was an accusation (using
'Nazi' no less — that post seemed full of bitterness) that anyone was
trying to force anyone to use styles.

Styles are a better way, but some people are resistant to change,
preferring to use a word processor as if it were merely an electronic
typewriter. As the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water ....'

#17

Hi :slight_smile:
I am a bit bitter about this sort of thing too.  Even back when i was in school i could see teachers clearly trying to help people.  Unfortunately general attitudes of the kids in the classroom meant that even those of us that were interested in learning the skill had a tough time.  It didn't improve at Uni.

There have been some excellent suggestions in this list.  Perhaps set a mini-competition half the class using 1 technique. Perhaps ask for hands up if they can't cope with using styles, in order to play to the machismo of some.  When the results are in ask who can change the formatting of their document fastest.

Another idea is to get a horribly mangled paragraph and challenge them to insert it into their document to fit the style of their own work.

I frequently have to do this for my company's newsletter and at first found it took hours to try to fix people's messes in Word.  In LibreOffice i just pasted as unformatted and then applied styles taking just a couple of minutes at most.

However i still think it's easier to teach people things they want to learn.  Trying to trick them into wanting to learn about something else is a tough challenge.

Regards from

Tom :slight_smile:

#18

I no longer need to write in any "required style or page format. SO, I never got into using styles. But you have a valid point in needing students to learn how to use it. The fact that writing "style" requirements change every so often. I went to 4 colleges and received 3 degrees. The problem I had was that every time I went back to college, the "standards" for foot notes, indexing, bibilography, and many other things I learn in one college English/Writing course changed. I ended up taking English and Writing courses several time to learn the new standards that the colleges were teaching and required for any paper to be turned into the professors. Then there are those classes that require specific formatting and styles for their paperwork.

If you create a set of styles, one per class/course/teacher, then you can write the documents and then apply the styles needed by the professor, or even the business reader.

I myself have run across times where using styles would work for me, but I never really learned how to use them correctly. Never took the time.

Tom's and other postings about getting students to "compete" in how fast it would be to format a "mangled" text to a predefined style and the others doing it the "hard way". Then having the students "compete" in a race to see who can create a style from scratch for the document. I bet there would be different version created that do the same end results.

The only problem I see with styles is some people may go and make a document so complex with styles for "everything" that it creates problems for an new user to edit/modify the document with new information or reorganize the flow of the document. I had to do that a few months ago and it was not easy. It seemed that every possible portion of the document, i.e. paragraph text and titles, columns and frames, images and headlines, were all defined in such a way that when moving text and images around the document, the styles setup would try to define the wrong text or document element. The editing and moving of text and images broke the very complex styling of the document.

The point is, styles are great in concepts, but some people can get carried away with their complexity. I have a book editor friend that I email back and forth with. She has some real horror stories trying to edit manuscripts that the author wrote using a complex set of styles. So if you teach and/or use styles, kept them simple enough that it does not get in the way of the next person needing to modify the document.

#19

Hi :slight_smile:
I think you are thinking of Word rather than Writer.  Also you are talking about "House Styles" for different companies, different institutions, different professors.  Language and fashions do evolve too as you were also saying.

In Word Styles do tend to get very messy very quickly and it's overly complicated.  Plus you can never be sure that a style's definition will hold all the way through a document.

By contrast LibreOffice Styles "Cascade" (a bit like Css but different) so it's easy to change (for example the font of) one level of headings and find that change ripples out to other relevant styles.  KISS for internally consistent documents.

Regards from

Tom :slight_smile:

#20

I first learned about styles and templates with Microsoft Word, and I think it is clear that this is something that all word processors do, for a very good reason. Back in the 1990s I developed a course for our degree completion students (basically people in their 40s who had started on a bachelors degree but never finished it). They needed to demonstrate proficiency with office software programs to graduate, and if they could not pass a test they could take my course and pass it. What almost always happened was that they put it off until the last possible time either because they thought they already knew it all, or because they thought they couldn't learn computer stuff and were afraid. By the time I was done with them, they almost always complained that they should have been given the course at the beginning because it would have saved them so much time. So people can learn this, and people can see the benefit of learning this.

I now do training sessions at placed like Ohio LinuxFest, and they are very well received. I just did another this past weekend at Penguicon, and had very enthusiastic participation. These are all people who chose to be there, so there is no possible implication of force involved. These are tools, and every tool works best if you learn how to do it properly. If you pick up the wrong saw and use it the wrong way, you may eventually cut the piece of wood, but it will look bad and take a lot more effort than it should.

Regards,

#21

Same experience here;
           the rules keep changing, so I stick with the Keep It Simple
system :wink:

#22

One additional thought: those who have learnt HTML and CSS should find
using styles quite natural — it is the same separation of content from
presentation (styles).

#23

NO
it was a Writer file from the 3.4.x days.

The file needed a lot of work and additions to reflect the changes from 3.6.x to 4.0.x. I was not the one who created the document, but I had it for over a year and finally had some time to work on that documentation. I almost gave up. The person must have done a lot of "experimentation" with every style option in the document, even where it was not needed. I even found a sentence that has just a few words in it with their own style that was not used anywhere else. I ended up going back to an exported unformatted .txt file and starting over from there.

I hope the guy did not write the LO document in Word, but he could of, since he still has Word 2007, if I remember correctly. I use to use both Word 2003 and LO in the early days on a Win XP system, since I had to give others Word documents, so I made sure the LO .doc file looked correctly in Word. Sometimes it was easier to just do the editing in Word when I was using my laptop at their home or office. Now I just use 4.0.x on all my Windows systems, since it is better at dealing with the .doc/.docx files I am getting via email. I never went beyond MSO '03.

The KISS standard is something many "experimenters" do not use many times. They want to be to "creative" for my tastes.

BUT
as for the original posting. . . .
I really like the idea of teaching people to use LO in the higher education environments. The younger crowd would be easier to teach since they were not so "frozen" onto the MSO mentality and concepts. Making learning fun and people of all ages might learn more in a faster time and enjoy the learning process more than I found in most of my college courses, and in the high school courses I had to teach as a substitute teacher.

Templates vs. Styles is a whole different discussion with pros and cons with each. For the business world, templates might be easier to deal with for the user, since they do not need to remember which styles go with which document[s] they are required to make. Then you do not need to see if the "master document" creator's work with styles gets to work with all of the user's individual desk systems. I really do not know how to import a number style from computer to another so they can be used on different documents. The same problem might come up with one writer including a font in their document that the next person using it does not have that font installed. The document states/displays the correct font in the font drop-down window, but Writer tries to use a different installed font as a substitute.