Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Paragraph styles

On 05/05/2013 01:19 PM, Virgil Arrington wrote:
> Doug wrote,
>
> > I may be wrong, but it would seem to me that all this fuss about 
> > styles is made by people who are trying to do desktop publishing.
> > That's fine, altho there are probably better programs to do that, 
> > even available to Linux users. I'm not ashamed to say that I use
> > word processors as word processors, not as desktop publishers. I am 
> > very happy to have this glorified typewriter--one which
> > can import whole paragraphs, move them, or existing ones around, 
> > correct spelling errors without retyping, so some editing--all the
> > things I might have done on my typewriter, except now so much faster 
> > and easier.  Let the publisher of my document format it with
> > his desktop publishing app.  He doesn't need a word processor, he 
> > needs its big brother--but I don't!
>
> Actually, Doug, it sounds like you're using word processors as "text 
> editors," simple programs that allow you to enter and edit text 
> without worrying about final output. Most people using word processors 
> are preparing documents to be printed, and if you're going to print a 
> text file, you're going to have to format it.
>
> Styles provide a very effective way to quickly and consistently format 
> a document. I agree, if you don't care about formatting, don't worry 
> about styles. But, if you do care about formatting, and you want to do 
> it efficiently, consistently, and quickly, then styles let you do that.
>
> Let's say you want to build a house. You can do it with a hand saw and 
> a hammer if you want, but my guess is that a professional builder 
> would want to take advantage of the most advanced power tools 
> available even if s/he might need to invest some time to learn how to 
> use them.
>
> Virgil
I write letters--where I have a heading saved as a file that I can 
import--and I write occasionally for publication, in which case I write 
double-spaced,
extra space for paragraph, and no indent. I don't need any kind of 
"style" to do that--I can set the double space once per article--that is 
no more
trouble than finding and turning on a preset style, which I could only 
do if I knew how to create it in the first place. And I edit material 
sent for a
newsletter of some 1000 circulation, for which the publisher uses 
Pagemaker on a Mac to format it. I don't know, but I think  any kind of 
style
setting would go bonkers seeing the formats that come in and trying to 
mold them into something consistent. I mold them fairly easily in a word
processor, by hand. And I save in MS .doc 1997~2003 format, because 
everybody in the world can read that. And I write emails, and all I need to
do is fix typos, which styles can't do!

I rest my case.  --doug


--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted