Template Thoughts and Update

I updated LibO3_3_chapter_template.ott in various. I left change tracking on, so you can see what I proposed.

* It already mentions that names of books and such should use the Emphasized style. Although I recall from grade school treating the names of books and the names of stories differently, I suppose for simplicity we can have just one. But, how would we hyperlink/cross reference the name of a different chapter, or worse yet, the name of a section within a different chapter?

* The OTT file already notes that there are styles for Menu Paths and certain UI elements. I saw that they were not always used, and in fact did not notice such a style at first. The template admonishes against ever using Bold and Italic or other changes directly.

It states that names of dialog boxes are in plain text. I changed that to refer to a new LibOUiItem style, which I defined to look exactly like the existing OooMenuPath style. Also, use the same treatment on all elements uniformly; buttons are not different from field labels, etc.

As for the appearance of the menu path separators, I made a User Field for that. Apparently, as far as I can tell, I can insert text but not associated complex formatting. Is there a fancier mechanism available? So, you need to use the field to insert whatever character and spacing is used, and also apply a character format to just that part. And, the whole of the substitution needs to work with a single style.

At least, once that is done, you can change the arrow character, it spacing, and its style globally and it changes everywhere.

Related question: does the template changer add-in pull in "User Fields"? Do they normally replicate in the manner of a style change when you open the document again?

* What fonts are used? What fonts can/should we use? I noticed another stray bit of formatting in the OTT file: one word was in Bitstream Vera Serif. And in the chapter I looked at initially, the contents of a table is DejaVu Serif and the table headers in DejaVu Sans. Looking closely now, that is not the definition of the styles, so it was applied directly.

Is there a tool to show what fonts are being used in the document? It would help identify stray formatting.
Likewise, is there a way to identify or search for any ad-hoc formatting, as opposed to text that only gets its attributes from named styles?

I updated LibO3_3_chapter_template.ott in various. I left change tracking on, so you can see what I proposed.

* It already mentions that names of books and such should use the Emphasized style. Although I recall from grade school treating the names of books and the names of stories differently, I suppose for simplicity we can have just one. But, how would we hyperlink/cross reference the name of a different chapter, or worse yet, the name of a section within a different chapter?

The decision was not to attempt any hyperlinking between chapters or books, at least not yet. I asked before.

* The OTT file already notes that there are styles for Menu Paths and certain UI elements. I saw that they were not always used, and in fact did not notice such a style at first. The template admonishes against ever using Bold and Italic or other changes directly.

Right, but it's been done anyway sometimes.

It states that names of dialog boxes are in plain text. I changed that to refer to a new LibOUiItem style, which I defined to look exactly like the existing OooMenuPath style. Also, use the same treatment on all elements uniformly; buttons are not different from field labels, etc.

Why not OOoDialogName (or LibDialogName)? There are lots of user interface items, let's be specific. Buttons, icons, dialog tabs, ....

TestFonts can generate a list of fonts used in a document. That doesn't
mean that it catches fonts used in the wrong place, thought.

You can obtain it from
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/TestFonts .

Note: It works with some builds/versions of LibO, but not with others.

jonathon

Hi John, :slight_smile:

Can you just tell me where you've stored your updated template please?

David Nelson

"various".

Hi John, :slight_smile:

Thanks, I've got it checked out at the moment to take a look-see...

David Nelson

Hi John, :slight_smile:

I had a look at your revised template. My 2 cents about things would be this:

1) One of the first things I'd like personally to see done would be to
rename the OOo styles as LibO styles. I can't think of any reason for
*not* doing this. Can anyone else think of any issues that would
arise?

2) As regards the menu item separator, I'd opt for simplicity and just
use ">". Using a field feels like an unnecessary complication to me,
and I'm not so fond of the arrow in LiberationMono. I'd add a sentence
to make this a convention.

3) There no clear conventions in the template about how to express
keystrokes and keystroke sequences. My suggestion would be that we
should add explanations about this. Again, I'd keep things simple and
use "<>" to enclose all keystrokes, and I would't bother with special
characters from WingDings, etc (for the Mac <Cmd> key, for instance).
So we'd have:

<Enter>, <Cmd>, <Ctrl>, <F1>, <Shift>, <CapsLock>, <Ctrl> + <S> etc.

However, it's true that the LibreOffice software itself doesn't do
this. So what are people's thoughts on that?

David Nelson

Or devise a special character style ? In the French OOo How-Tos and Guides we have adopted a style: The key name is in sans serif font (eg. LiberationSans), bold, white on black background. We add unbreakable spaces at both ends so that the name appears more "massive". We use the style name "Touche" (ie, "Key").

Hi John, :slight_smile:

I had a look at your revised template. My 2 cents about things would be this:

1) One of the first things I'd like personally to see done would be to
rename the OOo styles as LibO styles. I can't think of any reason for
*not* doing this. Can anyone else think of any issues that would
arise?

I'd like to see the prefix end with something other than a capital letter -- the style name will be considerably easier to read that way. Lib, Lo, LibO-, or something else. But any name changes have to take the style hierarchy into account, and will force all the documents through a number of hoops to apply the right styles. I'm not sure what steps are required there, or how automatic they can be.

2) As regards the menu item separator, I'd opt for simplicity and just
use ">". Using a field feels like an unnecessary complication to me,
and I'm not so fond of the arrow in LiberationMono. I'd add a sentence
to make this a convention.

This is my preference, too; it's a very widely used technique.

3) There no clear conventions in the template about how to express
keystrokes and keystroke sequences. My suggestion would be that we
should add explanations about this. Again, I'd keep things simple and
use "<>" to enclose all keystrokes, and I would't bother with special
characters from WingDings, etc (for the Mac<Cmd> key, for instance).
So we'd have:

<Enter>,<Cmd>,<Ctrl>,<F1>,<Shift>,<CapsLock>,<Ctrl> +<S> etc.

However, it's true that the LibreOffice software itself doesn't do
this. So what are people's thoughts on that?

David Nelson

The original template called for the OOoKeystroke style (Liberation Sans italic) for these, and the docs seem mostly to do that, with no angle brackets, and generally the label that appears on a standard keyboard (or an easily identifiable abbreviation like Bksp) -- but I'd agree that for things like the Mac command key and the Windows key I'd rather see the name, and brackets might help distinguish them. Having them all in angle brackets would be OK, but I'd prefer <Ctrl-S> to <Ctrl> + <S>, for example, or better yet use square brackets, which are easier to type: [Ctrl-S]. I like Jean-Francois' Liberation Sans bold white-on-black style for them, but why not modify the existing style? In any case, adding an explanation to the template and to a Conventions component in the front matter would be good.

I'd also like to see individual, readily identifiable style names for each type of referenced item. (I'll use Lib here as the prefix, but we should agree on one.) So : LibStyleName, LibFieldName, LibTabName, LibRefBookName, LibRefChapterName, LibRefHeading, LibDialogSection, LibButtonName, LibIconName, .... Then there's no confusion about what is preferred. Right now, they're mostly either OOoEmphasis or OOoStrongEmphasis, or done by direct application (ugh!). The template shows the things that the user clicks on as OOoMenuPath (bold), and the others as OOoEmphasis (italic), but this has been very inconsistently applied. Having the unambiguous names in the custom styles list would make it easy to apply the right style, and to make consistent changes for individual items as desired.