Re: [libreoffice-users] Master Documents, Office Suites, and the Underwood

On Wed, 26 Mar 2014, Virgil Arrington wrote:

> On 3/26/2014 6:08 AM, James E Lang wrote:
> > Hi, Tom and others.
> >
> > I am finding this discussion to be intellectually stimulating though I have 
> no idea as to the mechanics involved in developing or using master documents.
> > What you write about saving time is most likely very true. However I have 
> probably never written a document with more than about a dozen paragraphs and 
> I have no idea where to look for the study materials that you say can be read 
> in ten minutes thus immediately saving twenty minutes to an hour.
>
> Having shouted the glories of styles, let me also say that their benefit 
> comes from doing the same types of documents over and over again. If I 
> were using Writer to create a wide variety of (relatively short) 
> documents, then styles might make me go mad. To use them properly would 
> require me to create dozens of templates and styles covering every type 
> of possible situation. That might take far more time than just typing 
> the dang letter and hitting <ctrl-p>.

thank you for injecting this into the discussion. the use of styles is 
not primarily a matter of inducing uninitiated into a new technology, 
it's a matter of fitness to purpose (in my opinion).

for one thing, in OO and LO one is always using a style, the 'default 
style', but if you mostly write short bits then probably don't need 
styles (the default style suffices) though I myself change the default 
to indent the first line of new paragraphs and change font face and 
size to what I prefer.

more complicated work or specially formatted jobs prosper from styles. 
I bring out a bound volume of essays every yr and shudder to think 
what would be involved without a basic template for it.

> As for master documents, I wouldn't go down that road unless I were 
> doing a truly massive project, in which one minor corruption could ruin 
> the entire document.

I have found master documents a bit unwieldy for my essay collection 
project. the essays come from diverse authors so I have to do a fair 
amount of individual editing. then a good template cuts down on some 
of it and it's just as easy (for me) to pull it all together into one 
book (file).

F.

> Virgil

--
Felmon Davis

Include me out.

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