There We Go!

[Adam Lindsay]

Mark Smith said this at Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:58:04 +0100:

>To give you an idea about how I feel about the styles, I would pay the
>price gladly for OO3 Pro if it *took out* the styles completely and gave
>me a way of *naming* a relatively small number of elements that were
>tagged as such in an available XML output file. Named elements and
>hierarchy are more than sufficient (for my needs) to be able to generate
>the different kinds of output I might need. Like you, I see the styles as
>a distraction. Unfortunately, naming the styles to suit my elements and
>just making them all *look* the same, is a poor substutute.

Mark, I'm trying to get at what sort of documents you're producing. I've
experimented a little with XML output/transforms, and it sounds to me as
if you're shooting yourself in the foot in wishing away named styles.

Named styles are just the right way of getting across a tag without too
much visual clutter. (Okay, in testing, I'm a little frustrated that tags
without any text formatting associated with them are ignored.) Of course,
this is most effective with mixed-content kinds of documents (plain and
tagged text within an element, e.g., XHTML-style). 

If you're dealing with more structured element(-only) content, then I can
see how pop-ups might be better suited to your needs. I guess that way
you get off cheaply! As for me, I'm only just now starting to appreciate
the real power of these styles.
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 Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
 Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
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