Re: [Libreoffice] format inspector (Was : Re: sw: numbering misbehaviour)

On 28/12/10 12:54, Philipp Weissenbacher wrote:
> > But I didn't know about that OOo bug. I'll need to learn styles, but yes,
> > > *me* learning styles is totally useless when it's *someone* *else* who's
> > > messed up *their* document (and expects me to fix it for them).
> I think that's *exactly* *the* use case: fixing broken formatting.
Actually, no it isn't. It's a very useful use case, when I'm helping
other people ...

But when *I* am creating a document in WordPerfect I nearly always have
reveal codes switched on. I *think* in markup mode, and the whole point
of reveal codes is it is a markup window that shows me what's going on.
As has been said, it keeps me in touch with what formatting is active
(is the cursor *in*side or *out*side the style selection for example :-)
I actually use reveal codes as my main working window, not the wysiwyg
one. (And whether reveal codes is active actually affects the
functioning of the wysiwyg window :-)

My wife is making calendars with pictures and tables - I find it
incredibly useful to keep track of the anchors that hold the pictures ...

Oh - and something Word can't do, dunno about Writer ... what on earth
do you do when you have two formatting objects one on top of the other?
How do you "click on the object"? It's easy to get like that with text
over/under a picture or stuff like that, but I said something Word
couldn't do ... WordPerfect has the "advance" typesetting command which
places the cursor anywhere you like on the *current* page - so you can
type a load of text then move the cursor back and overtype. Word has
allegedly the same, but it only moves downwards so if you tell it to
move up it will move to that position on the next page. And while I
don't use the feature very much, I use it for letters. Place my address
top right, then go back to left margin, place cursor two inches down the
page, and start typing the recipient's address. Yes there are other ways
of doing it but that's exactly the way the makes sense to a typist.

The other use case I've mentioned is teaching. Showing people what's
going on "under the bonnet".

But I think the problem you have is that you think differently.
WordPerfect was aimed at the expert typist. Word was aimed at the
two-fingered hunt-n-peck'er. A lot of people hated reveal codes, but a
lot of people loved it. And until you have a EDITing markup window, you
won't get the WordPerfect fanatics to move across. Because the
Word/Writer way of thinking is just plain *ALIEN* to people like me ...
:-) I *HATE* the Word interface. And Writer (although I don't know it
that well) seems too similar for comfort :-(

Oh - that reminds me of something I came across ages ago when someone
was comparing Word and WordPerfect - they said "in WordPerfect, you tell
it what formatting you want as you go, and it comes out pretty much as
you want. In Word, you type the text in and then go back and lay it out."

I would say, though, if all you know of WordPerfect is from v9/2000
onwards, that got rewritten as a Windows program by Corel and is badly
corrupted by the Windows/Word way of thinking :-(

Cheers,
Wol