Re: [libreoffice-users] Tab defaults change when pasting into Writer from some other applications

Tim,

I'm way too late in this thread to be helpful as I have been absent for 
several months (for some reason the list stopped recognizing my email 
address, so I recently resubscribed with a different address).

That said, I can relate to what I perceive to be your issues. I do a lot 
of Bible study work with LO and eSword and Bibletime as well as 
Bible.org. I always run into problems when I copy and paste quotes from 
one of these sources to LO.

As I look at your document (an interesting study indeed, btw -- love the 
reference to Origen), I see a lot of formatting inconsistency going on. 
Font changes, smartquotes here, dumbquotes there, etc. This is the 
result of pasting formatted text from one source into LO. Now you may 
not care about this as I'm sure these are probably private notes, not 
necessarily for dissemination, but...

In my experience with extra-LO sources such as eSword, etc., I've come 
to always paste using Paste-Special/Unformatted text. That way, I can 
then quickly apply an appropriate paragraph style to the text and all is 
well.

Virgil

btw., Ironically, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting in my Law Office 
Technology class while my students are taking a test on the use of 
paragraph styles. After teaching this class for five semesters, I've 
finally found an approach that works. I think Tom suggested it. I give 
them an unformatted document and ask them to format it using any method 
they understand. They usually take 30 to 45 minutes and end up with a 
mess. I then demonstrate reformatting the document with styles and I'm 
done in about 3 minutes and the document formatting is consistent and 
useful. I then ask, "If your client was paying $200 an hour to have a 
legal document prepared and formatted, who would they rather pay, me or 
you?"


On 10/31/2014 9:57 AM, Tim Deaton wrote:
> Sorry for the delay in responding.  Too many other things going on.
>
> -- Tim
> ===========================
>
> On 10/26/2014 4:56 PM, Brian Barker wrote:
> > At 16:25 26/10/2014 -0400, Dan Lewis wrote:
> > > On 10/26/2014 02:13 PM, Brian Barker wrote:
> > > > At 13:51 26/10/2014 -0400, Tim Deaton wrote:
> > > > > I'm currently running LO v4.2.6.3 on Windows 7, 64-bit, SP1.
> > > > >
> > > > > I use Writer primarily to create notes for Bible study lessons. In 
> > > > > that process, I often copy text into Writer from other programs 
> > > > > (most likely e-Sword and TheWord (two free Bible software programs 
> > > > > which, I think, both use the SQLite open-source database 
> > > > > program).  The template I use for this has the default tab-stop 
> > > > > setting (Tools|Options|LO Writer|General) set to 0.25 inch.
> > > > >
> > > > > My problem is that when copying text passages from those (and 
> > > > > perhaps other) programs into LO, that default tab-stop gets reset 
> > > > > to 0.5 inch, so that I have to go into the Options to change it 
> > > > > back after each copy/paste.  I don't know when exactly this 
> > > > > behavior started, but I do know this resetting did not happen when 
> > > > > I was using OOo and then LO 3.x.  It either started with LO 4.0 or 
> > > > > 4.1.
> > > >
> > > > I'm not sure why you would want to use default tab stops at all. 
> > > > They are so close that you often need to add multiple consecutive 
> > > > tab characters, and this is surely a recipe for your documents 
> > > > being fragile and not robust to changes of font, paper size, 
> > > > printer, platform, and so on? Tab stops are a property of paragraph 
> > > > styles. Why not set up a paragraph style with just the tab stops 
> > > > you actually need and then apply this style to the text (very 
> > > > easily done) immediately after pasting
> > >
> > > What about using paste special the "Unformatted text" option after 
> > > creating the paragraph style you want?
> >
> > I'm not sure how that helps. In any case, the questioner originally 
> > said he wanted to retain elements of formatting in the copied text.
> >
> > Brian Barker
> Thanks for your comments, and your patience.
>
> The reason for the .25" tab stops (about 6mm) is that in these 
> documents I do a lot of outline-type indenting, but without the 
> outline numbering.  Also, the pasted-in scripture sections use .25" 
> hanging indents in one of the source programs, and I like to keep 
> that.  It's NOT for tabbed spaces in the middle of a line.
>
> When I started using OOo for this, I set up a template just for these 
> documents, and brought that over to LO when I switched.  The .25" 
> default tab stops are part of that template.  Given its age, I doubt I 
> used styles then, but I really don't remember.   I just know that the 
> default setting used to not be bothered by the stuff I paste in from 
> eSword and TheWord, but now it is.
>
> Here's a link to a recent document:
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50459876/ss20141026.Heb8.odt
> (I wanted to include this on my original post, but computer problems - 
> part of the "too many other things" above - prevented that.)
>
> - Tim D.


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