Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: A feature, or ...?

At 17:45 27/11/2013 -0800, Peter West wrote:
> It's a bug, or, if you prefer, a missing vital feature.

It's a feature - and I don't think it's missing, in fact.

> The problem: If you have a document filled with paragraph formatting 
> which has been applied directly using a paragraph style menu, any 
> styles you define and apply as a style will be overridden by the 
> direct formatting previously applied.  There is no way that I have 
> found to remove it, except by a manual change using the paragraph 
> style menu.  That fixes my problem, but passes the same problem on 
> to the next person who wants to change the paragraph styling.

I fear that paragraph is somewhat confused.  There is direct 
character formatting, character style formatting, paragraph 
formatting, and paragraph style formatting - all different.  To 
confuse things further, you can apply character formatting or 
character style formatting to an entire paragraph.  If you really do 
solve your problem using a new paragraph style (and I'm not clear why 
you would call this a "manual change"), I think you have left your 
document in an ideal state for later modification by yourself or others.

> How to fix it: Add Format menu items "Clear all 
> paragraph/character(/list?) formatting." It doesn't actually remove 
> all formatting, but applies a default format which clear all the 
> problem formats and allows a style to be cleanly applied.

You don't need to clear any style formatting, as any modifications to 
these styles or replacements by other styles will simply supersede 
existing effects.  What can be a problem is any local ("direct") 
character formatting which may have been applied - perhaps even 
(confusingly) to complete paragraphs.  (This is the way that a 
beginner will format his or her documents.)  But no-one needs to add 
any menu items: what you need is already there, at Format | Default 
Formatting (or right-click | Default Formatting or Ctrl+M).  If you 
invoke this and then apply your new styles, everything should be hunky-dory.

> List formatting is such a delicate matter that I don't know whether 
> a clear all list formatting operation would cause more trouble than it's worth.

Any proper list formatting (applied using styles) should survive the 
application of Default Formatting, which is what you would want.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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