[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: KWord Styles
From:       Jost Schenck <uzsnty () uni-bonn ! de>
Date:       2000-11-30 22:19:31
[Download RAW message or body]

Sorry to drop in and probably I'm not really into the topic, but: as some 
know, I'm currently writing my thesis and the bad implementation of styles in 
most word processors is what's causing most trouble, so I just want to loose 
a few words if you're already rethinking the design :)

> The TOC is created by looking at the style for every paragraph and the
> styles that have the name 'Head something' are used.
> The 'depth' in the style definition is used to set the style of the
> generated TOC.

This is implemented dirty in most word processors. The right way I think is: 
the "field" (don't know how it's called in KWord) for TOC has separately 
configurable properties for:
a) which paragraph styles to base the TOC on (i.e. things like Heading 1 etc.
   you can even set several styles for ONE depth) and whether to use extra
   TOC entry fields to create the TOC
b) which paragraph style to use for showing the TOC, one style for one depth
   i.e. you'll normally have extra styles: TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3 etc. By
   changing these you can configure the looks of the TOC.

It's done like this more-or-less in MS Word as well as StarOffice, in 
StarOffice a bit cleaner. 
"TOC entry field" is an (invisible in printout) field that you can insert 
into a paragraph if it doesn't have a heading but should have an entry in the 
TOC anyway. It should have at least three properties: the TOC entry text, the 
depth and an option whether to show the paragraph numbering in the TOC. This 
feature's implementation in MS Word is actually absolutely unusable in 
MS Word when you're doing a complex text for university (I'm not an 
MS-basher, it's just that I have to use Word right now, and it's this feature 
that really sucks).

> I was considering showing a dialog that lets you build the TOC definiton
> yourself, using the fact that only styles that are ellegable are show this
> should be easy for the user.

Realizing it like this, I think the dialog should just offer:
a) assigning a certain heading style ("Heading 1") to a certain depth ("1")
b) assigning a certain depth ("1") to a certain TOC paragraph style ("TOC 1")

> Only styles that have a 'Chapter Numbering' kind of enumeration and
> off-cource are set to an enumeration type can be used.

This I don't understand. Why?
-Jost.

P.S. What I miss in styles right now is char styles in addition to paragraph 
styles. MS-Word mixes paragraph styles and char styles, StarOffice cleanly 
separates these two, which I like. It's VERY important to have char styles: 
you need them first for good markup, to assign things like "emphasized". When 
editing the paragraph numbering, one should be able to assign a char style to 
the numbering, because else it is not possible to make the numbering e.g. 
italic etc. 





_______________________________________________
Koffice-devel mailing list
Koffice-devel@master.kde.org
http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice-devel

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]