"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:472f0772$1@news.povray.org...
> If you write stuff in LaTeX, you can ask for a section heading or a 
> subsection heading, and LaTeX will automatically take care of all 
> formatting for you. Indeed, it will even build a table of contents if you 
> want.
>
> If you write stuff in HTML, you can also ask for various levels of 
> headings. And using CSS, you can tune exactly what the result looks like. 
> For example, if you suddenly decide that you want all the level 2 headings 
> in italics, you can change 1 line of CSS and the whole document is 
> instantly updated to match.
>
> And yet, no known word processor works like this. I find this deeply 
> frustrating. I should be able to just hilight some text and say "this is a 
> heading" and all the formatting should *just work*. But I have yet to find 
> a word processor that can do this. And it irritates the hell out of me!

Whinge, whinge, whinge.  :-P  :-)
They do do it.  You just haven't figured it out.

> Both Word and OpenOffice provide "styles", but good luck figuring out how 
> to work them. In particular, Word provides styles called "Normal", 
> "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc. But it seems to be physically impossible to 
> *change* these styles.

They can be changed.

> And what the hell is the point of a style that you can't change? Being 
> able to instantly change all the headings in your document at once is the 
> entire *point* of styles!! So why make them read-only?

They're not read-only, so blaming them for not doing it is void.  :-p

> (I've just moved from Word 97 to Word 2003. It's really quite amusing 
> watching it create millions of useless style objects each time I press a 
> formatting button. It would be far more amusing however if I could 
> actually *use* styles to do something useful...)

Ok, I'll be more helpful.  For working in Word 2003...
I included a Word doc I quickly bashed together for you to demonstrate. 
Literally took me a few minutes.    Virus scanned with McAfee VirusScan10 
Engine 5100, Dat Version 5155 (2/11/2007)

First thing you should do: Set "Style area width" to 1.67 cm.
Found in (Tools / Options / View Tab) near the bottom of the dialog.
Now, when you view your document in "Normal" mode, you can see and select 
the style headings down the left side of every paragraph.  Makes editing 
life much easier.

To convert the current paragraph into a Heading style at the current level, 
press <alt-shift-LeftArrow>.  The first time you do it, it will be Heading 
1.

To make a subordinate-level heading (eg Heading 2, 3, 4...) out of the 
current paragraph, press <alt-shift-RightArrow>.  Repeat if necessary to go 
further.

To promote the current paragraph up the Heading heirarchy, press 
<alt-shift-LeftArrow> as many times as needed.

To change the current paragraph to Normal style, press <ctrl-shift-N>.  Or, 
if your NumLock toggle is OFF, you can press <alt-shift-Keypad5>

To change every instance of a particular style in the document:
Double-click the name in the style area next to its paragraph.  You get the 
"Style" dialog.  Choose "Modify...".  You get the "Modify Style" dialog.  Do 
whatever you want to it out of the "Format" drop button.  OK and Apply your 
way out.  Bingo.

To have ALL instances of a particular style change throughout the document 
as soon as you change the format of any one of them:  Go to that "Modify 
Style" dialog again.  Tick "Automatically Update".  NOTE:  Any subordinate 
styles that inherit format code from the style you changed, would all change 
too, unless they have an explicit setting.  (eg. if you italicise "Heading 
2", the same will happen to "Heading 3, 4, 5")  But that is logical.

> As for OpenOffice Writer,

Unfamiliar with OOW.

> Seriously. I want to be able to create sections and subsections, and *I* 
> want to choose what these look like. Is that really so hard? Why has 
> nobody implemented this simple feature yet??
>
> (In particular, I utterly *hate* sans serif fonts. Yet all these programs 
> always default to it. GRR! At least Excel lets you change the default 
> worksheet font; OpenOffice Calc seems to lack any such option...)

I'd feel sad for you, but I prefer sans-serif.  Particularly for the types 
of documentation we do most of at work (standards, policy, process, work 
instruction, system description).  Easier to read and clearer pages than all 
the serif clutter, which I think is more appropriate to books and 
promotional material.

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