Hi Bernhard, all, Bernhard Dippold wrote:
Hi Rafael, all!
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What I was thinking is how to make new users (or even old ones) to use style-based rather than direct formatting.[...]Styles are a very mighty feature - but as you state below, they are not accessible enough to be accepted by the average user.The result is Style formatting is quite invisible to many users, unless they know what they're doing. And in that case, it's still not pretty or easily accessible. You can feel the power when you change the Font in all of your titles at once, or when you change line spacing in all of your paragraphs but long quotations in their own paragraphs. Even then, having to open a new Styles & Formatting window, selecting the right style, asking to edit it, then managing through a new dialog is quite a hassle. What if I just wanted to change a single aspect of my style, say, first line indent, then see how it looks, then change another, say, paragraph indent, then another, and another, I would have to go though that dialog a thousand times. I might get tired, and opt for the direct formatting as a easier way to do things. I've done that, back then with openoffice 1.1. What if there was another way? An easier, more intuitive, self-explanatory way?It would be great, but probably not easy at all to find a way "normal" user will accept it as better than the way they are used to.
I agree that it is not easy to teach people to use styles, been trying to a while. But there are a few things that I feel could make it easier.
The first thing is to have better documentation in Help about styles and what the built-in styles can be used for with examples.
Second is to either reduce the built-in style or allow them to be deleted by the user. All those choices can get very confusing, even for an experienced user.
Third, the user can change the Paragraph style from the Formatting tool bar and the Page style on the bottom Status bar, but Character, Frame and List Styles have to be accessed through the Styles and Formatting window. The S&F window takes up space and not something that everyone wants visible all the time. Having a drop-down or the like to select these styles would improve work flow.
Last, if adding the information to Help have a link in the related parts back to the wiki with better examples and explanations of styles and when, how and where they can/should be used.
The above is based on messages in OOo & LibreOffice mailing list and forums.
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Andy
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