Styles naming and usage in LibO manuals

Hi,

(copy to the FR discuss list where it all started)

I'm at a loss about the styles names and use in LibO docs (I'm referring here to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/f/f5/0101GS3-IntroducingLibO.odt, but the same goes to others)

I'm wondering why the styles used are OOoSomeNewStyle while predefined styles already exist for the same purpose in the software (eg: OOoTextBody vs pre-defined TextBody)

I think the current naming scheme is faulty and that this important drawback should be addressed.

The problem I see here is interoperability. This pilar of Free Software is very welcome into our office automation tools. This way, our documents can be transferred everywhere and used by anyone, the style name being translated and meaningful to the reader (eg: the paragraph style "Heading 1" in English is "Titre 1" in French).

-> Any non-standard expression is a source of misunderstanding.
-> Any non-standard naming can't be easily translated.

The second drawback is much worse. If I want to display documents using my own style sheets, I can configure any pre-defined style to fit my needs or desires and create my own templates (this is basic styles and templates use). This way, when I get a document from anywhere, I can be sure it will look the way *I* want.

-> Any non-standard naming defeats in-house rules.

I'm sure there's some reason why the obscure OOoSomeNewStyle scheme has been adopted but I can't see any explanation that would overrule the two problems above.

Also, we must be aware that the documents we produce here are to be used as good practice examples by our audience. Anytime I teach Writer, I emphasize on styles and good practices about them. Having "official" documents (well, there's the TDF logo somewhere, right?) that don't actually apply such good practices is bad teaching.

Can anyone with a long experience explain this naming thingy?

Because of the problems listed above, I think we should review the documents styles and adopt the predefined styles wherever they are concerned, additional styles being introduced very sparingly.

Best regards,

Personally, I prefer using the factory style names as much as possible and only create custom style names as the need arises.

The OOo prefix in the custom style names was in use before I first used them while editing the Writer user guide, templates, and style guides and such during the OOo version 2.x docs in the spring of 2006--obviously a carryforward from the OOo version 1.x years. I and others continued to employ them to the present and onto the LO docs.

Gary

Hello

I am also curious as to why the standard style names have not been used for
the document templates used in LibreOffice documentation. Having specific
style names can cause problems when converting a document into another
format such as RTF or Word and I speak from personal experience when
converting templates into different formats - never easy, but better when
standard style names are used.

Also, using the standard style names for the documents also emphasises the
versatility of LibreOffice when used for creating large and complicated
documents. This could be a good selling point in getting users to adopt
LibreOffice as their main office software.

It makes me think that LibreOffice missed an opportunity when it came into
being from OpenOffice. Even just renaming the style names so that the names
start with LO instead of OOo.

Obviously there could be a legacy problem from existing documents, but new
names could be used when creating documents for a new version of
LibreOffice, that is 3.5.

Regards

Peter

Starting with version 3.5, most of the former standard paragraph styles for lists were deleted. Quite possibly, other styles from the pre-3.5 versions were canned as well, but I did not bother to check into that yet.

Gary

Hi :slight_smile:
Initial releases of documentation had to be rushed through in order to re-brand community-written documentation released under copyleft agreements in order to help promote LibreOffice and also hopefully avoid Oracle doing their usual money-grabbing & court-action weirdness.  A lot of companies seem to be buying-up trademarks and ip-rights and stuff in order to generate income from court actions.  The team got the job done well.

Now the priorities are a bit different and there might be time to deal with issues like this now.  Would it be a good time to start fresh documents with a very much more recent version of LibreOffice with fresh styles and everything so that we avoid legacy issues that might be being carried over from the early days of OpenOffice?  Copy&pasting contents, perhaps the contents.xml (?), might be a good way to totally refresh&update everything?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi,

apart from Gary, this topic doesn't seem to attract masses... Jean? The Authors?

To all: I am willing to participate to any effort into a styles adaptation within the guides documents according to my first message suggestions. Though, this effort is not worth right now, because of the new features that should be introduced into LibO v.3.5 wrt styles. When this version is out, I'm ok for some work into that matter.

Thanks for your attention,

Doesn't matter to me whether your proposed change is done or not. I
certainly have no objection, but I won't have time to work on it
myself.

I am concerned about the amount of work involved to change all the
existing documents. I'm sure some could be automated by our macro
gurus, but checking for what breaks is always a manual job --
especially since some of the files still have very old style
definitions lurking in them. However, if program changes wrt styles in
LO 3.5 require us to fix our lists or other styles, then doing the
whole job at the same time makes much sense. And when revising docs to
cover feature changes, we have to check all the files anyway... so
perhaps the extra work won't be as great as I think.

So if you are volunteering to do the styles adaptation, or an
important part of it, that's okay with me.

--Jean