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

2014-03-25 14:33 GMT+01:00 Kracked_P_P---webmaster <
webmaster@krackedpress.com>:

> I was taught K.I.S.S as a programmer, and I have not removed that idea in
> my documents.


​A small comment on the KISS concept: "simple" does not necessarily mean
minimalist, or immediately accessible, it can mean "easy" too. Even simple
things like keeping headings formatting consistent is not simple to do by
hand: you have to give every heading the same formatting (font size,
characters modifiers...), and if you need to change them for some obscur
reason, you have to loop over all your headings by hand to do so. Surely as
a programmer you can see the problem here :)


Now, if you're not familiar with styles, you'll see them as "hidden"
formattin aide, or think they have changes "buried" deep down. And indeed,
it is possible to do extremely complicated things (know that styles are
cascading, can inherit from their parent, and the final formatting of a
character is a combination of page style, paragraph style, character style,
paragraph formatting and character formatting).
But it doesn't mean you have to go all out with this. You can have a flat
list of two-three styles and stick to them. They will sit there, on the
right of you screen (or wherever you've put the style toolbar). Nothing's
hidden, nothing's buried in the depth of style micro-managing... and *that*
is what some peoples (including myself) see as the "simple" part of KISS :)

​If you're mixing style and direct formatting though, there you're asking
for trouble. It's possible too, but at this point you have to remember too
many layers of formatting (in my opinion).

But, LO was made to be a office suite.  Writer was made to be a word
> processor.  Sure you can go "all out" and use it as a desktop publisher and
> other document formatter that does strange an wonderfully eye-catching
> things to the text, but do we all need to learn how to do those things?  Do
> we all need to use them to create and format our documents?  No, I should
> hope not.


You point out that LO is an office suite, and not a desktop publisher...
but the thing is, it is. As with everything you don't have to use all these
functionalities, but they are present, and used by many (even on this list
we get every once in a while someone with some questions regarding
publishing with LO).​ But, if you don't have to learn how to use them, you
have to know they exist to avoid misusing them. If one keep all it's typing
in the "standard" style and does everything by hand, it's fine, but if you
start mixing both, and then push them in a master document, you should know
what to expect, even if you don't want to use this.

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