Reveal code, old macros convert them to LO

users
#1

Hi

From time to time the question pops up whether LO could support

Wordperfects reveal code. The developer are not too keen, and sometimes
it is stated that this feature could be implemented by a
macro/extension.

Now I remember that long time ago such macros existed and using the
wayback machine I found them. They were written around 2005 for OO 1.2,
using the sxw format.

I tried them out in LO 6.2 and they don't work.

Is there somebody with enough knownledge in macros to translate those
macros to LO 6.2?

Thanks and regards

Uwe Brauer

#2

Hi

>From time to time the question pops up whether LO could support
Wordperfects reveal code. The developer are not too keen, and sometimes
it is stated that this feature could be implemented by a
macro/extension.

Now I remember that long time ago such macros existed and using the
wayback machine I found them. They were written around 2005 for OO 1.2,
using the sxw format.

I tried them out in LO 6.2 and they don't work.

Is there somebody with enough knownledge in macros to translate those
macros to LO 6.2?

How much code are we talking about?

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#3

Hi

> From time to time the question pops up whether LO could support
Wordperfects reveal code. The developer are not too keen, and sometimes
it is stated that this feature could be implemented by a
macro/extension.

Now I remember that long time ago such macros existed and using the
wayback machine I found them. They were written around 2005 for OO 1.2,
using the sxw format.

I tried them out in LO 6.2 and they don't work.

Is there somebody with enough knownledge in macros to translate those
macros to LO 6.2?

Thanks and regards

Uwe Brauer

Just in case any further support for this change is desired, one of the all-time
BEST features of Word Perfect was "reveal codes". You could actually use it to
figure out why the page format was not as expected!

I would love to see this feature added to Libre Office!

John

#4

just so we're clear, the macro functionality was not even close to the functionality in word perfect. all the macro did, was displaying a dialogue all of the codes. There is certainly a lot of use for this, but nothing near what you do automatically in word perfect.

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#5

I don't think it was that much code. I might even have a working copy from a few years back, but won't have computer access until next week. Might have deleted it.

If you can't make it work, remind me next week and I can take a look.

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#6

"AP" == Andrew Pitonyak <andrew@pitonyak.org> writes:

I don't think it was that much code. I might even have a working copy
from a few years back, but won't have computer access until next week.
Might have deleted it.

Here is what I found.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180326030224/http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/

I finally made some progress using LO 5 (in 6 it seems I was not
successful).

However when executing any of these macros, I recveived a macro language
error, but I really don't now the language so I can't really tell much.

#7

"AP" == Andrew Pitonyak <andrew@pitonyak.org> writes:

just so we're clear, the macro functionality was not even close to the
functionality in word perfect. all the macro did, was displaying a
dialogue all of the codes. There is certainly a lot of use for this,
but nothing near what you do automatically in word perfect.

Right, you have to select a paragraph and then the formatting code was
revealed, but it was by no means updated when you wrote, or something
like this.

I still consider it as very useful (I know one of the macros had a
result which looked closer to WP than the others, but I don't remember which
of the 3 macros it was)

#8

I don't remember the details of the sxw format. Perhaps reveal codes were
appropriate then. However, ODF files have a complex SGML or HTML or XML
type format, along with a form of CSS, unlike WordPerfect and similar
programs, which used embedded code to delineate format changes. That is,
there are no format codes to reveal in ODF documents. Any program that
pretended to show some kind of "format code" would be hopelessly
misleading.

#9

Indeed...

A single style may cause multiple changes. I don't remember how that is displayed in the macro.

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#10

"j" == jomali <jomali3945@gmail.com> writes:

I don't remember the details of the sxw format. Perhaps reveal codes were
appropriate then. However, ODF files have a complex SGML or HTML or XML
type format, along with a form of CSS, unlike WordPerfect and similar
programs, which used embedded code to delineate format changes. That is,
there are no format codes to reveal in ODF documents. Any program that
pretended to show some kind of "format code" would be hopelessly
misleading.

If I remember correctly sxw was a lot like odt, styles included, the
changes between both was mostly name conventions of the tags etc, but I
am not completely sure.

But right wordperfect has a different approach then OO or even word, but
may that reveal code feature could work for those documents which take
more a visual approach and don't rely much on styles.

BTW I just remembered there is a app called cross eyes for Word 2011,
which has some reveal functionality and Word 2011 used already xml based
file formats.

#11

Some 25 years ago, the government law office where I worked used
WordPerfect exclusively and we all relied on Reveal Codes, which was a
necessity because of the way we worked with WP. Although it had some
style functionality, we never used it; instead we used WP like a digital
typewriter, inserting formatting codes as we typed. Because of the way
WP inserted formatting codes, one could do all sorts of things that
today's word processors might forbid, such as changing line spacing or
margins in the middle of a paragraph. It wasn't unusual that, after a
while, a document would get full of formatting codes that were neither
needed nor desired, so reveal codes was necessary to sort it all out and
clean things up.

Then, one weekend, our IT department came in and blew off WP and
installed Word. At first, we all rebelled, in part because we no longer
had our beloved reveal codes. But, after a while, I learned how to use
Word's style functionality and, then, when I began using StarOffice,
then OpenOffice, then LO, I transferred the style mentality to those
programs as well.

Now that I have learned page, paragraph, and character styles, I would
never dream of returning to a program like WP. More importantly, I find
I never need reveal codes because it is simply unnecessary considering
the way LO works.

Virgil

#12

I bet that office still uses FAX.  :wink:

Many years ago, I used Wordstar 2000 at work and it had similar issues
with all the formatting codes.  I'd often go through documents clearing
up the mess others had created because they didn't understand what the
formatting codes did.  Like WP, Wordstar had a method to display the
mess^H^H^H^H formatting created with those codes.

#13

> Hi
>
> > From time to time the question pops up whether LO could support
> Wordperfects reveal code. The developer are not too keen, and sometimes
> it is stated that this feature could be implemented by a
> macro/extension.
>
> Now I remember that long time ago such macros existed and using the
> wayback machine I found them. They were written around 2005 for OO 1.2,
> using the sxw format.
>
> I tried them out in LO 6.2 and they don't work.
>
> Is there somebody with enough knownledge in macros to translate those
> macros to LO 6.2?
>
> Thanks and regards
>
> Uwe Brauer
>
Just in case any further support for this change is desired, one of the
all-time
BEST features of Word Perfect was "reveal codes". You could actually use
it to
figure out why the page format was not as expected!

I would love to see this feature added to Libre Office!

If you use styles the way it's intended, you won't have those problems in
the first place. I have never had them (as far as I remember), even when I
was not using styles properly. Direct formatting should generally be
avoided, if you ask me.

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#14

With WP, I recall seeing paragraphs beginning with a string of
conflicting formatting codes such as
<SingleSpace><DblSpace><SingleSpace><LineSpace:1.5><DbleSpace>. It
appeared that, as a user made formatting changes, the program would just
add the new code without deleting the formatting being replaced. The
program would only apply the last code, but all the earlier ones
remained in place until they were deleted using reveal codes, which was
a real life saver with WP.

To my knowledge, that sort of thing doesn't happen with LO, making
reveal codes unnecessary. To me, using reveal codes  in LO is like
trying to use a gas gauge on an electric car.

Virgil

#15

Yes if you only work with odt documents. But if you force to deal with
docx and you run into problems, that feature might be useful.

#16

I have a .docx file that I experimented with. These are the things that I did with it.

1) Opened the .docx file in LO 6.2.5.1, and saved it as a .odt file.

2) Used Control+A to select the entire document.

3) Right clicked the text and then selected "Clear Direct Formatting".

4) Used LO to reformat the document to match the original documents layout.

I did run into problems with hyperlinks as they retained the original format especially the font and font size. To get around that, I recreated the hyperlinks along side of the originals. Then I erased the originals.

If you want, I could take a look at your document to see what could be done with it.

Dan

#17

Styles the way they are supposed to be is ???

Just that it's worth the time to make sure you have all the styles you'll
need and always use them, rather than using direct formatting. There are a
bit more to styles that first meet the eye. At work I see people work with
Word and they do all kinds of insane stuff, direct formatting everything
and very soon it's all a mess that's hard to sort out. Nothing looks
consistent and, well, I already said it, everything is a mess. For
instance, I see people use Word like they would use a typewriter. They do
blank lines to increase the distance between paragraphs (instead of setting
the distance to the next paragraph in the style itself), and when writing
things in columns they use space characters and so on. I think I have seen
most kinds of crazy things being done in Word (which is what they use at my
work). Suddenly they find that all headers are a bit too big or too small,
then they have to edit a hundred pages maybe and they just spend time doing
things that they wouldn't need to do if they did it right in the first
place. Some people like to mess with fonts as well, making several words in
each paragraph bold, for instance, which usually doesn't add anything
useful for anybody. Sure, there can be reasons to do that once in a while,
but too much just looks messy.

If you do your styles right, you will only use your Enter key once for each
paragraph or header, and never more than once in a row. Your text will look
consistent and there is no mess to deal with. Instead of inventing
different ways to deal with a mess, just don't create the mess!

But as someone pointed out, sometimes someone else wrote the document and
maybe in a different format, but there are ways to deal with that too, as
someone also already described in this thread.

Another thing to mention is of course that in LibreOffice (and Apache
OpenOffice) there are no ”codes” to reveal in the first place, so if we
must have such a feature, those codes has to be faked somehow. That doesn't
seem like a good way to make LibreOffice faster…

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#18

To my knowledge, that sort of thing doesn't happen with LO, making reveal codes unnecessary.

In general, I agree with you.
However, there were one or two times when the RevealCodes4Cal macro
showed me what was going wrong with the styles in the cells, that
Stylist was not displaying, or otherwise telling me.

I never found the standard reveal codes useful. Much simpler to simply
export the document to plain text, then open it as a plain text file,
then add the appropriate formatting, than mess around with what styles
might, or more often might not have been used.

To me, using reveal codes  in LO is like trying to use a gas gauge on an electric car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j52odgkRxDs
and that is not the only video on YouTube showing somebody trying to
figure out where to put gas into their Tesla.