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List:       openoffice-users
Subject:    Re: Re: if adding things to OOo was dead simple
From:       Andrew Brown <killspam () darwinwars ! com>
Date:       2004-04-18 6:56:45
Message-ID: Xns94CF50F0ED341andrewdarwinwarscom () 80 ! 91 ! 224 ! 252
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Tim Wescott <tim@wescottdesign.com> wrote in
news:4081CE04.6020201@wescottdesign.com: 

> Outliner?  Are you familiar with the navigator?  You use it completely
> differently from a M$ Word outline view but once you get used to it
> it's very nice.  Or do you mean something different when you say
> "Outliner"? 
> 

Yes, I know the Navigator, and I use it quite a lot. However, there are
a number of disadvantages. For one thing, text in the navigator doesn't
wrap, so that you can't use it to display whole sentences, or even whole
notes. I have a request for enhancement in for this in IZ. For a second,
there is no easy and obvious way to assign different heading levels to
paragraphs that look like plain text. I can do that with a template, but
it's troublesome, error-prone, and should be easier. 

A proper outliner allows you to shift headings and their associated
sub-headings around, and to navigate quickly among them. This the
Navigator does. But a proper outliner also allows you to show and edit
the text levels you are interested in, and hide those you don't want to
see, and this is the bit that is missing from OOo at present. In fact,
it's not so much missing, as split between the navigator and the main
view. 

The Navigator has the ability to hide uninteresting sub-levels. But
because the text won't wrap, you can't see much of the levels you don't
hide, and you can't edit anything directly inthe Navigator window at
all. 

The main window lets you see and edit text of any level. But you can't
hide the text in which you are not interested, and you can't easily move
headings and their associated sub-heads around. It would be possible to
lash these capabilities together using macros in the latest milestone
releases, which do have hidden text. But it would be a lot of trouble,
and not ver portable or easy to install -- look at the fuss people make
about the very much simpler word counting macro. Even when written and
installed, you would still, I think, have to move text using the
navigator display, while editing it in the main window. A proper
outlining mode would allow you to do both in the same window. 

Letting text wrap in the Navigator window would be a start, though, and
it would make other things, like notes, easier to read. 


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