"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
472f0772$1@news.povray.org...

> "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc. But it seems to be physically impossible to 
> *change* these styles.

Because you're a wimp. Go build some muscles. Have you looked at all those 
secretaries? Seen their huge, bulging forearms and their sausage-thick 
fingers ? That's the key. You need to try *** very hard *** to change styles 
in Word.

You can also use a sledgehammer but you'll be breaking the EULA, and 
Microsoft lawyers will have Northampton nuked into a glowing glass sheet 
before you can spell Arial.

G.

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scott wrote:
>> And yet, no known word processor works like this.
> 
> Hahaha what? You mean you don't know how to use Styles in Word?  How on 
> Earth do you write anything longer than a few pages efficiently?
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Get up the style and formatting tool bar, then just click the style 
> drop-down menu and choose "Modify...".
> 
>> 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??
> 
> A million other people want to do exactly what you say, and actually do 
> do it everyday in MS Word.
> 
>> (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...)
> 
> Go to Word, change the "Normal" style to use Arial font, then save the 
> document as NORMAL.DOT (search to see where your NORMAL.DOT is currently 
> located and overwrite it).  Job done.
> 
> 

I just worked with styles in Word in a doc.  Both helpful and a pain at 
the same time.  As with any thing - you must become an expert in it 
before it truly becomes helpful and saves time.  Until them you are 
fighting it to get what you want.

Have fun!

Tom

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scott wrote:
>> And yet, no known word processor works like this.
> 
> Hahaha what? You mean you don't know how to use Styles in Word?  How on 
> Earth do you write anything longer than a few pages efficiently?

Isn't the answer obvious? "I don't".

(As far as I can tell, nobody else here knows how to work styles either. 
Granted, most of them wouldn't actually *care*, but our report writers 
certainly might...)

>> 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.
> 
> Get up the style and formatting tool bar, then just click the style 
> drop-down menu and choose "Modify...".

Ah-hah. So there *is* a secret hidden tool for altering them! (At least, 
there is in Word 2003.)

Still puzzled as to why you have to open up a special window to do this. 
(I.e., why you can't just click on the style you want to change.) But 
then, this is from the program where you can't change any program 
settings unless you have a document open. (WTF?)

(Ooo, that's nice... If I change a style to match an existing one, the 
existing one gets deleted. And if I change the justification for the 
Normal style, the other styles update. Pitty you can't explicitly say 
which settings are applied in THIS style and which ones should just be 
inherited...)

>> (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...)
> 
> Go to Word, change the "Normal" style to use Arial font, then save the 
> document as NORMAL.DOT (search to see where your NORMAL.DOT is currently 
> located and overwrite it).  Job done.

Well, you just described the steps to do the *opposite* of what I want 
to do (i.e., I want to change *from* Arial, not *to* it), but OK. Let's 
see now...

OK, no go. Word *refuses* to overwrite NORMAL.DOT because it's already 
open. (Duh!) God I hate Word! >_<

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Because you're a wimp. Go build some muscles. Have you looked at all those 
> secretaries? Seen their huge, bulging forearms and their sausage-thick 
> fingers ? That's the key. You need to try *** very hard *** to change styles 
> in Word.

Try "very hard" as in "with a 2 Telsa magnet"?

> You can also use a sledgehammer but you'll be breaking the EULA

Heh. Isn't installing VNC a violation of the EULA? (And, for that 
matter, turning off Automatic Updates...)

> Microsoft lawyers will have Northampton nuked into a glowing glass sheet 
> before you can spell Arial.

Ooo, that would be nice... Maybe then they'll stop holding all the speed 
dating events in Northampton and start holding them in *my* hometown 
again! Yays!

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"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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Invisible escribió:
> 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. 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?
> 
> (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...)

I find it interesting that nobody on earth ever uses them. Come on, I 
just decided all those headings on the 30-page document shouldn't be 
centered. Go change them. Would take seconds using styles.

You *can* change them and stuff. It's in, erm... *opens Word* (I haven't 
used it in years (didn't need to) and now I have a different version).

OK If you're in 2003, use the styles dropdown and click "More" (or on 
the menu: Formatting | Styles and formatting). It opens a silly sidebar 
called "Styles and formatting". Click on the arrow on one of those 
styles and it opens a menu containing "Modify".

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Invisible a écrit :

> 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!

Lotus Ami Pro did that pretty well. Most consistent style-sheets system
I encountered in a word processor. Don't know if they still sell Ami's
successor, Word Pro.

BTW, don't highlight text when applying a style, just put the cursor within the
paragraph, and the style will be applied to the paragraph (that's how
it should be).

> 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. 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?

While Word is often of unpredictable nature, I actually manage to use MSWord's
Heading styles with custom appearance, without much hitches.  The main
rule I would give in that area is : don't try to do a numbered heading
hierarchy (1.1 1.2 1.2.1 ...) with other styles than Word's standard
"Heading X" styles.

I didn't encounter much problem doing this in OO, either.

> (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...)

It needs to be heavily configured to avoid most of these annoying
on-the-fly-style-creations.  Once you are accustomed to be very
cautious about what you're doing (never touch the ruler, always
paste-as-plain-text from other texts,...), you can have a chance to
limit the number of styles in use (been there, done that).

> As for OpenOffice Writer, here again we have styles. Except that here 
> the style system is way more complex; I really can't figure it out. 
> There seems to be several types of styles depending on what they apply 
> to and... I'm confused. Also, once again the defaults are not to my 
> liking, but there appears to be absolutely no way to change them. (Short 
> of editing each one by hand, for all several million. It also appears to 
> be impossible to remove unwanted styles...)

In OO, styles are generally cascading from "standard".

Do you want me to prepare a base document in OO or Word, based on your
indications, so you can see how it works from an already customised
document ?

Fabien.

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"Brian Elliott" <NotForSpam@AskIfUWant> wrote in message 
news:472f2462@news.povray.org...

Oh, and here's a version with Heading-based auto-numbering turned on.  Took 
another 20 seconds to do.

Put your cursor in a "Heading 1"-style paragraph (important).
Menu:  Format / "bullets and numbering" / "Outline Numbered" tab.
Select the example that looks like
   1  Heading 1 ----------
   1.1  Heading 2 ----------
   1.1.1  Heading 3 ----------

They are also customisable from that dialog.

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:472f1bf9$1@news.povray.org...

> (As far as I can tell, nobody else here knows how to work styles either.

See my other posts.

Post a reply to this message

Brian Elliott wrote:

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

So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet 
I couldn't figure out M$ Word?

What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)

(Come to think about it, one critical difference between Word and those 
other things is the lack of a *manual*. POV-Ray comes with an excellent 
manual, but Word only offers context help. Not very useful if you have 
no idea how a broad feature is supposed to work!)

>> (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.

I just think sans serif text looks primitive and unsophisticated and 
generally childish. (Arial is almost as ugly as my own hand writing - 
and that's saying something!) Plus I dislike having 3 distinct 
characters with identical glyphs. [Lower-L, upper-I and 1.]

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> Both Word and OpenOffice provide "styles", but good luck figuring out 
>> how to work them.
> 
> I find it interesting that nobody on earth ever uses them. Come on, I 
> just decided all those headings on the 30-page document shouldn't be 
> centered. Go change them. Would take seconds using styles.

Well, most people use Word to write 1-page documents. (Things like 
letters and printed notes, address labels, etc.) As for the rest, I 
guess it's just because it's so hard to figure out how this stuff 
actually works... [Assuming you even realise there's a useful thing to 
be learned about in the first place.]

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Fa3ien wrote:
> Invisible a écrit :
> 
>> And yet, no known word processor works like this. I find this deeply 
>> frustrating.
> 
> Lotus Ami Pro did that pretty well. Most consistent style-sheets system
> I encountered in a word processor. Don't know if they still sell Ami's
> successor, Word Pro.
> 
> BTW, don't highlight text when applying a style, just put the cursor 
> within the
> paragraph, and the style will be applied to the paragraph (that's how
> it should be).

So... how would you, for example, apply a style that only applies to a 
single word rather than a whole paragraph?

>> Both Word and OpenOffice provide "styles", but good luck figuring out 
>> how to work them.
> 
> While Word is often of unpredictable nature, I actually manage to use 
> MSWord's Heading styles with custom appearance, without much hitches.

The main problem with M$ Word is that it tries to "guess" what you want 
to do so it can automatically do it for you. M$ seems to think that this 
is "cleaver" and makes their software look cool. However, any number of 
HCI studies will show you that non-deterministic software is 
instrinsically harder to learn...

>> As for OpenOffice Writer, here again we have styles. Except that here 
>> the style system is way more complex; I really can't figure it out. 
>> There seems to be several types of styles depending on what they apply 
>> to and... I'm confused. Also, once again the defaults are not to my 
>> liking, but there appears to be absolutely no way to change them. 
>> (Short of editing each one by hand, for all several million. It also 
>> appears to be impossible to remove unwanted styles...)
> 
> In OO, styles are generally cascading from "standard".
> 
> Do you want me to prepare a base document in OO or Word, based on your
> indications, so you can see how it works from an already customised
> document ?

Once I discovered the secret hidden control panel where you can actually 
change this stuff, I managed to get Word to do what I want. (Although 
it's still very confusing trying to work out where all the settings 
here. E.g., why does it add a 12 pt kern there? I didn't ask for that?!)

The trouble with OO is that out of the box, there are several hundred 
styles defined. Most of which aren't appropriate to me, and which don't 
match my tastes anyway. I did sit down and start reconfiguring them all 
to the correct font one at a time, but it was taking forever. And the 
next document I started, it all went back to horrid Arial again anyway!

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Invisible escribió:
> Brian Elliott wrote:
> 
>> Whinge, whinge, whinge.  :-P  :-)
>> They do do it.  You just haven't figured it out.
> 
> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet 
> I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
> 
> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)

I definitely prefer writing in HTML than using any word processor (just 
like I prefer SDL than a graphical modeller). I should learn DocBook.

> (Come to think about it, one critical difference between Word and those 
> other things is the lack of a *manual*. POV-Ray comes with an excellent 
> manual, but Word only offers context help. Not very useful if you have 
> no idea how a broad feature is supposed to work!)

M$ Office is supposed to be intuitive, so people figure out how to use 
it without reading the manual. Stupid idea in my opinion. People 
intuitively find the Center and Bold buttons, and that's how the Styles 
feature goes unnoticed. And then those same users trying to use POV-Ray 
won't read the manual (because they aren't used to reading manuals) and 
won't get too far :D

I read Microsoft did a poll asking users what features they would like 
for the next version. A *very* large amount of people asked features 
that already exist. Microsoft figured the features were hard to find, 
and that's how we get the new UI on Office 2007. Even if it's easier for 
new users (which I doubt), everyone who already knew how to use Office 
2003 now has to re-learn everything.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
>> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) 
>> yet I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
>>
>> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)
> 
> I definitely prefer writing in HTML than using any word processor (just 
> like I prefer SDL than a graphical modeller). I should learn DocBook.

I prefer writing in LaTeX, mainly due to the quality of the final 
output. On the downside, you really can't configure it very much. Here 
HTML is the way to go; lots of scope with CSS! But then, no maths...

I *could* prefer an editor like Word or OpenOffice, if only it would let 
me do structural markup rather than presentational...

> M$ Office is supposed to be intuitive, so people figure out how to use 
> it without reading the manual. Stupid idea in my opinion.

I agree.

Context help is all very nice and all, but for gaining a broad overview 
of how a feature is meant to work, nothing beats a logically structured 
manual.

> People 
> intuitively find the Center and Bold buttons, and that's how the Styles 
> feature goes unnoticed.

Arguably that's a issue of poor UI design choices. ;-) (I.e., the 
formatting buttons are big and bold in the middle of the display, and 
the styles are a tiny little thing in the corner that isn't even wide 
enough to display the whole text.)

> And then those same users trying to use POV-Ray 
> won't read the manual (because they aren't used to reading manuals) and 
> won't get too far :D

Well, no.

How many people ask where the wireframe view and the mesh editor is? ;-)

> I read Microsoft did a poll asking users what features they would like 
> for the next version. A *very* large amount of people asked features 
> that already exist. Microsoft figured the features were hard to find, 
> and that's how we get the new UI on Office 2007. Even if it's easier for 
> new users (which I doubt), everyone who already knew how to use Office 
> 2003 now has to re-learn everything.

Haha - M$ can then claim all these are "new" features, and everybody will go

   OMFG!!1!!eleven... micsoft is teh 0wnerz!

and think M$ are a really great company for producing all these cool new 
features. *sigh*

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Invisible a écrit :
> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet 
> I couldn't figure out M$ Word?

In fairness, changing the styles in LaTeX is not something trivial 
either. As far as I figure, anytime you want to modify the appearance of 
something, you are going to have to dig into TeX code, which is not 
really friendly. That's the spirit of LaTeX, to split the formatting 
from the structure as much as possible.

I like LaTeX allright, but I admit it is utterly broken in some respects 
(images and fonts come to mind), and I dream that someday someone will 
come up with an alternative that fixes some of these... Once in a while, 
departing from the backward-compatible frozen software could be a good 
thing.

I mean I hope we will not be stuck forever between LaTeX where you 
cannot do anything visually, and Word-alike where you must do everything 
visually...

-- 
Vincent

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Vincent Le Chevalier wrote:

> In fairness, changing the styles in LaTeX is not something trivial 
> either.

Lamentably true...

> I like LaTeX allright, but I admit it is utterly broken in some respects 
> (images and fonts come to mind), and I dream that someday someone will 
> come up with an alternative that fixes some of these... Once in a while, 
> departing from the backward-compatible frozen software could be a good 
> thing.
> 
> I mean I hope we will not be stuck forever between LaTeX where you 
> cannot do anything visually, and Word-alike where you must do everything 
> visually...

Amen!

(Now and then, I do have these insane ideas that maybe I could 
reimplement TeX using Haskell. I mean, the source code is available, so...)

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:
> Because you're a wimp. Go build some muscles. Have you looked at all those
> secretaries? Seen their huge, bulging forearms and their sausage-thick
> fingers ? That's the key. You need to try *** very hard *** to change styles
> in Word.
>
> You can also use a sledgehammer but you'll be breaking the EULA, and
> Microsoft lawyers will have Northampton nuked into a glowing glass sheet
> before you can spell Arial.

LOL! :))

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Invisible escribió:
> Here HTML is the way to go; lots of scope with CSS! But then, no maths...

Well, you can mix MathML inside XHTML; but I can't tell you about 
browser support :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> Here HTML is the way to go; lots of scope with CSS! But then, no maths...
> 
> Well, you can mix MathML inside XHTML; but I can't tell you about 
> browser support :)

And let us not even speak of source code readability or even typability...

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Invisible wrote:

> (Now and then, I do have these insane ideas that maybe I could 
> reimplement TeX using Haskell. I mean, the source code is available, so...)

I just downloaded "tex.web" and started reading it... Hmm, LOL!

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Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/05 08:34:

> Ah-hah. So there *is* a secret hidden tool for altering them! (At least, 
> there is in Word 2003.)
> 
> Still puzzled as to why you have to open up a special window to do this. 
> (I.e., why you can't just click on the style you want to change.) But 
> then, this is from the program where you can't change any program 
> settings unless you have a document open. (WTF?)
Still wondering about those same things...
> 
> (Ooo, that's nice... If I change a style to match an existing one, the 
> existing one gets deleted. And if I change the justification for the 
> Normal style, the other styles update. Pitty you can't explicitly say 
> which settings are applied in THIS style and which ones should just be 
> inherited...)
I know, inheritance can be a pain. As every styles ARE defined from the "normal" 
style, they ALL inherit any change you make to it. You should be able to set 
what characteristics of a style are inheritable.
Solution: Create your own style, say "MyNormal". Then, if you want, derive some 
other styles from it.
> 

> Well, you just described the steps to do the *opposite* of what I want 
> to do (i.e., I want to change *from* Arial, not *to* it), but OK. Let's 
> see now...
> 
> OK, no go. Word *refuses* to overwrite NORMAL.DOT because it's already 
> open. (Duh!) God I hate Word! >_<
File|Open... select "normal.dot", edit it, hit CTRL+S, done. Simple.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
No matter how much you do, you never do enough.

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Invisible a écrit :
> Fa3ien wrote:
>> Invisible a écrit :
>>
>>> And yet, no known word processor works like this. I find this deeply 
>>> frustrating.
>>
>> Lotus Ami Pro did that pretty well. Most consistent style-sheets system
>> I encountered in a word processor. Don't know if they still sell Ami's
>> successor, Word Pro.
>>
>> BTW, don't highlight text when applying a style, just put the cursor 
>> within the
>> paragraph, and the style will be applied to the paragraph (that's how
>> it should be).
> 
> So... how would you, for example, apply a style that only applies to a 
> single word rather than a whole paragraph?

There are *paragraph* styles (noted with that strange P), and *character*
styles (noted with an underlined 'a'). Altough Word lets you apply a
paragraph style on a *portion* of paragraph, you shouldn't, you should
use a character style in this situation. Or you'll run into problems.

> The main problem with M$ Word is that it tries to "guess" what you want 
> to do so it can automatically do it for you. M$ seems to think that this 
> is "cleaver" and makes their software look cool. However, any number of 
> HCI studies will show you that non-deterministic software is 
> instrinsically harder to learn...

Very true. Nonetheless, it's mostly possible to master Word, with
a little experience and self-discipline.

  > Once I discovered the secret hidden control panel where you can actually
> change this stuff, I managed to get Word to do what I want. (Although 
> it's still very confusing trying to work out where all the settings 
> here. E.g., why does it add a 12 pt kern there? I didn't ask for that?!)

Automatic numbering is especially frustrating in that respect.  But there
are also some tricks that helps, once it's understood.

> The trouble with OO is that out of the box, there are several hundred 
> styles defined. Most of which aren't appropriate to me, and which don't 
> match my tastes anyway. I did sit down and start reconfiguring them all 
> to the correct font one at a time, but it was taking forever. And the 
> next document I started, it all went back to horrid Arial again anyway!

Why define so many styles ? You just need to define 5 or 6 styles for
an average document.

Fabien.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> I just downloaded "tex.web" and started reading it... Hmm, LOL!

Oh wow... This stuff is really special.

The entire source code for TeX is a single 1 MB text file containing 
almost 25,000 lines of text. Almost all of it is documentation. I'm sure 
there's some Pascal code in there somewhere.

The code contains all kinds of bizare workarounds for ancient Pascal 
systems that don't support 8-bit character values (!), opening files 
who's names aren't known at compile-time (!!), storing error message 
strings in a flexible way (!?!), converting non-ASCII character sets 
such as EBCIDIC into ASCII before further processing, and all kinds of 
other utterly archaic non-issues.

Just... wow.

Clearly this thing is going to take an absurd amount of effort to 
decipher! o_O

Post a reply to this message

Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/05 10:11:
> Brian Elliott wrote:
> 
>> Whinge, whinge, whinge.  :-P  :-)
>> They do do it.  You just haven't figured it out.
> 
> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet 
> I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
> 
> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)
> 
> (Come to think about it, one critical difference between Word and those 
> other things is the lack of a *manual*. POV-Ray comes with an excellent 
> manual, but Word only offers context help. Not very useful if you have 
> no idea how a broad feature is supposed to work!)
> 

There ARE manuals, many of them in fact. It's just that they are NOT included 
with the product, some are very simples (Word for Dummy), and some even come 
with a teacher ;)


-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
A modest man is usually admired; if people ever hear of him.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:472f3294$1@news.povray.org...
> Brian Elliott wrote:
>
>> Whinge, whinge, whinge.  :-P  :-)
>> They do do it.  You just haven't figured it out.
>
> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda 
> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet I 
> couldn't figure out M$ Word?
>
> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)

Don't get too smug Andrew, it has a corollary:  What does it say about you? 
;-)

> (Come to think about it, one critical difference between Word and those 
> other things is the lack of a *manual*. POV-Ray comes with an excellent 
> manual, but Word only offers context help. Not very useful if you have no 
> idea how a broad feature is supposed to work!)

I don't particularly like it either.  Although there is a table-of-contents 
help, not only context.  But Word seems to on-demand download this help from 
Microsoft's Internet sites somewhere as you explore the topics.  There are 
benefits that I can think to doing it that way in terms of documentation 
quality and updates, but it creeps me out.  I won't even cite "saving 
storage space" as a valid excuse for doing it that way instead of shipping 
with the app.

>>> (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.
>
> I just think sans serif text looks primitive and unsophisticated and 
> generally childish. (Arial is almost as ugly as my own hand writing - and 
> that's saying something!)

Then we disagree on taste.  I like cleanliness and dislike clutter.  Whether 
or not serifs are attached isn't about "primitivity", it's about function.

There are purposes and situations to use serifed fonts, and situations for 
sans-serif.  Situations for old-style fonts and also for modern.  There are 
proper typographical definitions for these BTW and typography books describe 
which font styles are most appropriate to use in which document types. 
Writing a novel in a sans-serif font is bad for readability in massed text, 
but so is using a serifed font of the wrong weight, style or embellishment. 
A procedure document printed with a serifed font on a typical office A4 
printer can be eyecrossing.  It's about how whitespace is balanced in the 
font and the space around.  Race cars and sedans are both cars, but neither 
are suited to the other's function and you wouldn't use them that way.

> Plus I dislike having 3 distinct characters with identical glyphs. 
> [Lower-L, upper-I and 1.]

The 1 (one) is not affected -- it has a hook, but I agree the other two are 
definitely an issue.


... and I notice that while your reply shifts off-subject to complain about 
trivial points about fonts you hate and M$ you hate, you bypassed any notice 
of the important thing that this was all about:  That help to get you out of 
your predicament was given to you at all.  I even made a document for you to 
demonstrate the principle.  Even a "Thanks, I appreciate the effort and 
examples, but it didn't solve my issue" would be more socially apt.

At times like this, I think you deep down hate it when people help you to 
solve your problems, because your original motivation was only to be heard 
complaining.  Solving things takes away your justification to keep in a 
publicly bad mood.

-- 
Brian

Post a reply to this message

Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/05 10:17:
> Fa3ien wrote:
>> Invisible a écrit :
>>
>>> And yet, no known word processor works like this. I find this deeply 
>>> frustrating.
>>
>> Lotus Ami Pro did that pretty well. Most consistent style-sheets system
>> I encountered in a word processor. Don't know if they still sell Ami's
>> successor, Word Pro.
>>
>> BTW, don't highlight text when applying a style, just put the cursor 
>> within the
>> paragraph, and the style will be applied to the paragraph (that's how
>> it should be).
> 
> So... how would you, for example, apply a style that only applies to a 
> single word rather than a whole paragraph?
Put the cursor anywhere in the paragraph to change it's style, highlight one or 
some words to change them.
When you highlight something, any change you make apply to that block. Highlight 
a paragraph and change it's style, and the next paragraph will still have the 
default style. Put the cursor in the paragraph and change it's style, and the 
next paragraph will continue with that changed style.


-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you prefer bald romatic partners, 
because they're easier to model.
John VanSickle

Post a reply to this message

"Alain" <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote in message 
news:472f49f0$1@news.povray.org...
> Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/05 08:34:
>
>> Ah-hah. So there *is* a secret hidden tool for altering them! (At least, 
>> there is in Word 2003.)
>>
>> Still puzzled as to why you have to open up a special window to do this. 
>> (I.e., why you can't just click on the style you want to change.) But 
>> then, this is from the program where you can't change any program 
>> settings unless you have a document open. (WTF?)
> Still wondering about those same things...
>>
>> (Ooo, that's nice... If I change a style to match an existing one, the 
>> existing one gets deleted. And if I change the justification for the 
>> Normal style, the other styles update. Pitty you can't explicitly say 
>> which settings are applied in THIS style and which ones should just be 
>> inherited...)
> I know, inheritance can be a pain. As every styles ARE defined from the 
> "normal" style, they ALL inherit any change you make to it. You should be 
> able to set what characteristics of a style are inheritable.
> Solution: Create your own style, say "MyNormal". Then, if you want, derive 
> some other styles from it.
>>
>
>> Well, you just described the steps to do the *opposite* of what I want to 
>> do (i.e., I want to change *from* Arial, not *to* it), but OK. Let's see 
>> now...
>>
>> OK, no go. Word *refuses* to overwrite NORMAL.DOT because it's already 
>> open. (Duh!) God I hate Word! >_<
> File|Open... select "normal.dot", edit it, hit CTRL+S, done. Simple.

Andrew, THINK instead of reacting and publickly flying to bits at every 
puzzle you can't open in ten seconds flat.  Your biggest fallacy is assuming 
that because you haven't personally got it ***YET***, then it's proven FACT 
that NO answer exists.  Instead of taking research to the next level, you 
shut the book and blame the fuck out of the software for being criminally 
stupid or whatever thing it is that has your pique at the moment.

Seeking help and answers is OK.  Having tantrums is the realm of children 
and is not becoming in people beyond 11 years old.

You must be totally emotionally exhausted at the end of every day if they 
are all like this...

Post a reply to this message

Le 05.11.2007 13:07, Invisible nous fit lire :
> 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.

> 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??

Then your way is Lyx!
Latex front-end (hiding all the latex from innocent users). Ready to
write the model...

Or raw editing of XHTML. (no sexy bogus html writer which just keep
adding more and more tags of useless formatting).

-- 
The superior man understands what is right;
the inferior man understands what will sell.
-- Confucius

Post a reply to this message

> (As far as I can tell, nobody else here knows how to work styles either. 
> Granted, most of them wouldn't actually *care*, but our report writers 
> certainly might...)

How anyone can write a report in Word (or any WP) without using styles (or 
their equivalent) is beyond me.  How do you generate and keep updated the 
table of contents without them?  Or create a list of tables/figures?  Or let 
alone change the format of the section headings!

It's funny how companies spend thousands of pounds sending employees on 
training courses for bizarre pieces of software, but most fail to teach 
their employees how to use the software they use every day most effectively.

Post a reply to this message

> Well, most people use Word to write 1-page documents. (Things like letters 
> and printed notes, address labels, etc.) As for the rest, I guess it's 
> just because it's so hard to figure out how this stuff actually works... 
> [Assuming you even realise there's a useful thing to be learned about in 
> the first place.]

True, you need to have a certain level of intelligence to think "there must 
be a more effective way to do what I am trying to do", and then probably a 
bit more intelligence to actually bother to go and find out.

Remember, keep your saw sharp...

Post a reply to this message

Brian Elliott wrote:

> Andrew, THINK instead of reacting and publickly flying to bits at every 
> puzzle you can't open in ten seconds flat.

Erm, no, I've been using M$ Word for slightly longer than 10 seconds 
flat. ;-)

> Instead of taking research to the 
> next level, you shut the book and blame the fuck out of the software for 
> being criminally stupid or whatever thing it is that has your pique at 
> the moment.

[Ironic, given that one of the things I was just talking about is that 
there *isn't* a book...]

> Seeking help and answers is OK.  Having tantrums is the realm of 
> children and is not becoming in people beyond 11 years old.

Tantrums? You're the one who's swearing at me.

> You must be totally emotionally exhausted at the end of every day if 
> they are all like this...

No, not really. Most days I just don't let Word bother me.

Post a reply to this message

> Oh, and here's a version with Heading-based auto-numbering turned on. 
> Took
> another 20 seconds to do.
>
> Put your cursor in a "Heading 1"-style paragraph (important).
> Menu:  Format / "bullets and numbering" / "Outline Numbered" tab.
> Select the example that looks like
>   1  Heading 1 ----------
>   1.1  Heading 2 ----------
>   1.1.1  Heading 3 ----------

The best thing about that is that you can then go "insert table of contents" 
and everything is done for you.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> (As far as I can tell, nobody else here knows how to work styles 
>> either. Granted, most of them wouldn't actually *care*, but our report 
>> writers certainly might...)
> 
> How anyone can write a report in Word (or any WP) without using styles 
> (or their equivalent) is beyond me.

Like I said, the answer is quite simple: Very, very slowly.

Post a reply to this message

Le Forgeron wrote:

> Then your way is Lyx!
> Latex front-end (hiding all the latex from innocent users). Ready to
> write the model...

Ever tried using it?

Unfortunately, certain things that are trivial in LaTeX become 
irritatingly difficult with LyX. But yes, if the particular document you 
want to write won't use too many of all those things, it represents 
about the best you're going to get. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Brian Elliott wrote:

> Don't get too smug Andrew, it has a corollary:  What does it say about 
> you? ;-)

I'm stumped. What *does* it say about me?

>> I just think sans serif text looks primitive and unsophisticated and 
>> generally childish. (Arial is almost as ugly as my own hand writing - 
>> and that's saying something!)
> 
> Then we disagree on taste.

Fair enough.

> ... and I notice that while your reply shifts off-subject to complain 
> about trivial points about fonts you hate and M$ you hate, you bypassed 
> any notice of the important thing that this was all about:  That help to 
> get you out of your predicament was given to you at all.  I even made a 
> document for you to demonstrate the principle.  Even a "Thanks, I 
> appreciate the effort and examples, but it didn't solve my issue" would 
> be more socially apt.

Well, you said it only took you a few seconds to do it; I assumed that 
meant it was no huge hardship to you. I didn't actually mean to appear 
ungreatful. (And I thought my reply to Scott made it clear that I've 
solved this particular problem now... although on reflection maybe that 
isn't so clear.)

> At times like this, I think you deep down hate it when people help you 
> to solve your problems, because your original motivation was only to be 
> heard complaining.  Solving things takes away your justification to keep 
> in a publicly bad mood.

It's times like this that I wonder why I hang around here, when so many 
people are so keen to repeatedly tell me what an evil person I am. Trust 
me, I have enough little voices in my head repeatedly reminding me that 
I don't desurve to live without you adding your voice to it.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote
> Brian Elliott wrote:

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

> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda
> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet
> I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
>
> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)

Nothing. It says more about your anti MS-bias. Mind is a funny thing; if you
have somehow convinced yourself that learning something is beneath you (or
above you, but I suspect that's not the case here), you won't be able to
learn it, no matter how hard you try on the surface.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote
>> So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda
>> calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet
>> I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
>>
>> What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)
> 
> Nothing. It says more about your anti MS-bias. Mind is a funny thing; if you
> have somehow convinced yourself that learning something is beneath you (or
> above you, but I suspect that's not the case here), you won't be able to
> learn it, no matter how hard you try on the surface.

Well, you could say that. And I came to OpenOffice Writer fully 
expecting it to be much better. But you know what? I couldn't figure out 
how to use styles in that either. (At least, not very reliably.) I 
wanted to be able to say "haha, Word sucks, OOW is better", but I can't 
because it's not true. Is that bais?

Post a reply to this message

> It's times like this that I wonder why I hang around here, when so many 
> people are so keen to repeatedly tell me what an evil person I am. Trust 
> me, I have enough little voices in my head repeatedly reminding me that I 
> don't desurve to live without you adding your voice to it.

I don't think you're evil at all, just a bit annoying when instead of 
pressing F1 and typing "modify style" you write a huge rant about how crap 
MS Word is because *YOU* can't work out how to modify styles.  It's just the 
way you word it.  If you'd just said "does anyone know how to modify styles 
in Word, this is driving me nuts I've tried X and Y but to no avail" you'd 
probably get less "evil" replies.

You might also try pressing F1 in Word, then clicking "Table of Contents" 
and just having a browse through one day - you'll probably learn a lot.

Post a reply to this message

"somebody" <som### [at] somewherecom> wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote
> > So, I figured out LaTeX and HTML (not to mention POV-Ray, the Lambda
> > calculus, cryptography, inorganic chemistry, and much else besides) yet
> > I couldn't figure out M$ Word?
> >
> > What does this say about M$ Word? ;-)
>
> Nothing. It says more about your anti MS-bias.

I think it says more about his geekness factor.  Geeks are always after clever
ways of reinventing the wheel,  they can't simply pick a ready one and let go.

The easiest way of learning to use software is not by complaining about lack of
manual, but by sitting in front of it for hours and getting the hang and feel
of it.  And be sure to not be reasonable:  force errors to learn with them...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> I don't think you're evil at all, just a bit annoying when instead of 
> pressing F1 and typing "modify style" you write a huge rant about how 
> crap MS Word is because *YOU* can't work out how to modify styles.

Why does everybody think this is an anti-M$ rant? I said the same thing 
about OO...

> It's 
> just the way you word it.  If you'd just said "does anyone know how to 
> modify styles in Word, this is driving me nuts I've tried X and Y but to 
> no avail" you'd probably get less "evil" replies.

I guess I was actually expecting that it's not possible, but I thought 
somebody might know of a package that does it. (Somebody else already 
meantioned LyX, which is cute is a little fiddly.)

Perhaps the root problem here is that the octet sequence ultimately sent 
by my newsreader isn't a fantastically accurate reflection of my 
intended meaning...

> You might also try pressing F1 in Word, then clicking "Table of 
> Contents" and just having a browse through one day - you'll probably 
> learn a lot.

It might shock you to know that I have on occasion attempted to use 
Word's so-called "help" system. Sometimes it gives you useful 
information, often it doesn't. And sometimes you just hunt for hours 
looking for a crucial snippet of information, and never find it. It 
depends...

(I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched 
paperclip though!)

Post a reply to this message

> (I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched 
> paperclip though!)

You installed (or haven't uninstalled yet) *that* thing? o_O

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> (I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched 
>> paperclip though!)
> 
> You installed (or haven't uninstalled yet) *that* thing? o_O

...it's removable??

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:472f77ee$1@news.povray.org...
> scott wrote:
> >> (I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched
> >> paperclip though!)
> >
> > You installed (or haven't uninstalled yet) *that* thing? o_O
>
> ...it's removable??

You're kidding, surely.

Post a reply to this message

>> scott wrote:
>> >> (I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched
>> >> paperclip though!)
>> >
>> > You installed (or haven't uninstalled yet) *that* thing? o_O
>>
>> ...it's removable??
>
> You're kidding, surely.

Sometimes I really do expect him to post one day telling us all how he's 
been trolling us all this time and how gullible we all are.

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
472f77ee$1@news.povray.org...
> ...it's removable??

Andy, please. There's nothing wrong about being ignorant (everybody is), but 
you can't let yourself appear perpetually clueless about the simplest 
things, particularly when you spend so much time talking about much you love 
arcane programming stuff. There's some phenomenal discrepancy here.

A professional IT worker who don't know how to remove Clippy is like a guy 
who claims to be a race car driver, keeps talking about aerodynamic drag and 
airfoils, and then complains that he doesn't know how to turn on the 
headlights in Mommy's Ford Escort because it's so darn difficult and Ford is 
a lousy carmaker anyway. Or a wannabe porn actor unable to remove his pants 
because of that mysterious "zipper" technology.

When you don't know something, please do some minimal homework before asking 
questions. It will pay off some day. Really.

G.

Post a reply to this message

Le 05.11.2007 19:33, Orchid XP v7 nous fit lire :
> Le Forgeron wrote:
> 
>> Then your way is Lyx!
>> Latex front-end (hiding all the latex from innocent users). Ready to
>> write the model...
> 
> Ever tried using it?
>
Yes, with figures & tables too. For short document as well as big one.
Only trouble is I cannot easily resize a table: still have to create
it right the first time or copy-paste into the right one afterhand.

> Unfortunately, certain things that are trivial in LaTeX become
> irritatingly difficult with LyX. But yes, if the particular document you
> want to write won't use too many of all those things, it represents
> about the best you're going to get. ;-)

I focus on content, and leave latex&lyx do the formatting. Then I
check it and take care of the wrong looking things (like table far
too long for the page...)


-- 
The superior man understands what is right;
the inferior man understands what will sell.
-- Confucius

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:26:24 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> I *could* prefer an editor like Word or OpenOffice, if only it would let
> me do structural markup rather than presentational...

Sounds like you'd benefit from having a look at structured Framemaker, 
then.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> 
>> I just downloaded "tex.web" and started reading it... Hmm, LOL!
> 
> Oh wow... This stuff is really special.

Well yes, the day I'll try to make the world better with a new word 
processor, I think I'll start from scratch...

Not that this day has come yet ;-)

TeX is admirable because of its lifespan, its stability, its low count 
of bugs, but I think starting from its source would lead to a 
derivative, but nothing radically new...

-- 
Vincent

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 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.

MS Word does.  Change the style, and every piece of text with that style 
applied changes with it.

If you apply the heading styles to stuff in your documents, and then 
build a table of contents, it will be built from the header-styled items 
in the document.

Regards,
John
(who teaches computer literacy at the local high school)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
...
> (I am convinced that I cannot possibly be alone in hating that retched
> paperclip though!)

"The anti-Clippy Web site has gotten about 22 million hits since
launching April 11."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-05-03-clippy-campaign.htm

=)

-- 
Tor Olav
http://subcube.com

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