Re: [libreoffice-users] Paragraph styles

On 04/30/2013 04:18 PM, Dave Liesse wrote:
> As an end user, I'd like to ask one follow-up question to your third 
> point.  This is an "I don't understand" type of question, by the way, 
> not a challenge.
>
> Are you implying that if I want to, say, indent one paragraph with no 
> other changes, I should create a new style for that?  Seems like a lot 
> of work since it can be done with one mouse clicks (or, if I ever get 
> around to learning how to create shortcut keys, one keystroke 
> combination) plus navigating to the paragraph.
>
> (Just for the record, the indent and outdent keystrokes are probably 
> the thing I miss most from MS Word, and there's not much that I miss.)
>
> Dave
     From a personal perspective,you would not have to create a new 
style if you are only going to do this one time. However, if you then 
find that you want to do it more often, you probably should create a new 
style and use it every time you indent a paragraph this way.
     Creating such a style involves these steps: Suppose your paragraph 
style is named TextBody. Remember that this also requires the Styles and 
Fromatting window open (use the F11 key to open it).
1) Right click TextBody in the Paragraph styles list.
2) Select Modify from the context menu.
3) In the Organizer tab, name this new style (I suggest: TextBody-Indented).
4) Click the Indents & Spacing Tab.
5) Select the amount of the indentation you want in First line.
6) Click OK.
     Yes, for me this takes 6 steps. But most of it can be done with a 
mouse. Actually, only naming the style requires using the keyboard. 
Another point: this new style is identical to the original paragraph 
style except for the amount of indentation.
     It is really about moderation. It is also about some planning of 
what is to be contained in a text document. If you are creating several 
paragraphs that have the same format, a style that defines that format 
is a good idea. If you have only one or a very few paragraphs that are 
different, you might not want to create a style for only a very few 
paragraphs.
     Having said that, here is a real example that someone asked about 
on the OpenOffice.org mailing list several years ago. They were writing 
a document that contained two languages. Some of the paragraphs 
contained one language, and the rest contained a second language. How 
can words in two languages be spell checked?
     The answer was to create a paragraph style for one language and a 
second paragraph style for the second language. (This requires similar 
six steps to what I mentioned above. Step 4 would be to click the Font 
tab. Step 5 is to select the language desired.) Since the person had 
already installed the dictionaries for these languages, all that was 
needed was to assign the proper paragraph style by language. Then to 
check the spelling, the F7 key is clicked. Both languages have their 
spelling checked.

--Dan
> On 4/30/2013 12:40, Virgil Arrington wrote:
> > Several of the posts have brought me to thinking a few random thoughts.
> >
> > 1. There's a difference between *using* styles and *creating/editing* 
> > them. In the LyX/LaTeX world, as well as the HTML/CSS world, one is 
> > indeed forced to used styles (called "environments" in LaTeX speak) 
> > because that's the way the system works. The styles/environments are 
> > created by supposed experts who create document "classes," or 
> > templates. But, neither the classes nor the environments are easy to 
> > modify. The end-user selects the environment he wants (\chapter, 
> > \section, \quote, etc.) and then lets the program do the work. As one 
> > writer mentioned, it truly separates the operations of writing and 
> > typesetting/formatting. Markdown editors in the HTML world also allow 
> > such clean separation. None of the WYSIWYG word processors (Word, LO, 
> > OO, AbiWord, etc.) provide such a clean separation between editing 
> > and formatting. And, yet...
> >
> > 2. In the LyX/LaTeX world, it all works very well...until you want to 
> > modify a small formatting parameter for a specific paragraph. Yes, it 
> > can be done, but it's not intuitive, nor encouraged. Despite the 
> > advanced formatting capabilities of LyX or LaTeX, few writers use 
> > them, I believe in part because making even a small change from the 
> > default settings sometimes requires a massive on-line search for the 
> > right command to change.
> >
> > 3. In the Word/LO world, this case of the "one off" paragraph 
> > modification is where I see resistance to styles from end-users. I've 
> > got paragraph style for just about every possible situation, but 
> > there may be a single paragraph where a user wants to change one 
> > parameter. If the user doesn't understand styles, he'll just apply 
> > direct formatting to the paragraph, without creating and/or modifying 
> > a style. Thus, just having users write with templates and styles 
> > created by others will only take people so far. At some point in 
> > time, they will need to learn how to create and/or modify styles. 
> > Otherwise, they'll have documents with a mixture of styles and direct 
> > formatting, the beginning of what could grow into a mess. I believe 
> > AbiWord has (or had) a feature to "lock styles" meaning a person 
> > could be locked out of changing formatting directly. All formatting 
> > changes would have to go through styles. I'm sure it would be a 
> > maddening feature for the uninitiated, but it would encourage people 
> > to learn to do use styles in the "right" way.
> >
> > 4. Document collaboration is a real bugaboo. We lawyers share 
> > documents repeatedly. I would create a document using styles, and 
> > send it off to a colleague for further edits. I would get it back 
> > with a mess of styles and direct formatting. I see no answer to this 
> > conundrum, simply because our programs allow so many different ways 
> > of accomplishing the same tasks, and I couldn't expect a colleague to 
> > listen to my styles tutorial when all he wanted to do was make a 
> > small edit to my proposed contract.
> >
> > 5. I agree that LO's styles work much better than Word's. With LO, I 
> > can list my styles hierarchically, so I can change a parameter in one 
> > high level style and have it changed in all lower level styles based 
> > on the same higher style. (So, no, you don't have to change each and 
> > every style just to change the font throughout a document). Word has 
> > styles based on other styles as well, but I have yet to find a clean 
> > way to list them in the style box in a hierarchical manner.
> >
> > Virgil


--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@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