Writing content first and then styling is missing half the point of the styles. The styles not only facilitate formatting : they also give the document a hierarchical outline. Writing using a text processing tool that support an outline mode make me much more productive as I can use the word processor not only as a writing tool but as a tool that supports my thinking. Microsoft Word has it but Openoffice Writer does not. Contrary to what the Openoffice FAQ claims, the Navigator does not provide even a fraction of the functionality of MS Word's outline mode.

A year ago, Jim Sabatke said about OO Writer : "For example, it can't collapse multiple sections at a time so you can view/edit several other sections. For some reason, open source word processor teams are resisting this functionality that is an important "thinking" and "organizing" feature that many have come to depend on in almost every MS Windows Word processor". Make sure you take a look at Outliners.com : wou will understand where the many people like me come from ! As Robert P. J Day said about the outline mode : "MS Word is *exactly* what you want to emulate here. There is no need to do things "differently" or "better" from Word WRT outlining - they got it right". I wholeheartedly agree and I am very surprised to see that in the Openoffice issue tracker outline mode is a low priority issue that has been open since 2002 - that is more than four years !

Considering how important it is to many people I know (who are quite representative of the technical writing community) and how much it has been discussed for years all over the Net I really don't understand why outline mode has not been given more attention within the Openoffice project. If I was in a bad mood I would say that this project has a bad case of NIH... But I am not the sort of person who would carry libelous rumors such as this one...

Jean-Marc Liotier - jim@liotier.org

Hi Marco, JM,

when I was getting familiar with Personal Computers in 1985, text processing and formatting was a non-visual thing. That meant, people using text processors mostly didn't have access to a WYSIWYG user interface, albeit the revolutionary Apple Macintosh (nicknamed "yuppie totem" because of it's exorbitantly high price at release) was to be released with a visual text processor at that very moment. So, the mere mortals wrote their texts on a text-font only interface, that could indicate formating only by color highlighting, underlining and cursive letter fonts. So, in these times, it was quite natural to write the full text without formatting.

More than 20 years later, writing a (especially longer) text from a to z without formatting is something that almost demands high discipline from younger users - They mostly format their text as they type. And that's OK to me - fortunately, they don't have to cope with the restrictions of PC's back in the 80's.

Finally, I compare both ways to the development of coding tools. I learned to process text in a machine-friendly way, compared to the younger fellow hackers who do it the "natural" way.

A note on efficiency : I am still almost always done quicker with a text than my younger fellows, making them wonder how that's possible. Now, I tell them the old method, and give them the advice to learn to use their word processor without using a the mouse, learning to use key shortcuts instead. After the first week, the ones that stick to it tell me that they've cut writing and formatting time in half, using the oldschool method consequently. Why? Just because they keep their hands typing on the keyboard now, ignoring the computer mouse, and that's saving them a hell of a lot of time, believe me. And isn't time pure money, at least? ;-)

br,

Beat

But, all can I say, I am 19 and every time I start a document takes me like 20 minutes to find the right font, size, color, etc. And when i am finished, i dont like my job, so I think is a good Idea to wait to the last moment to pimp your document, even though you get a better idea of what it would look like if you format it first.

The first to bring it to the masses, I think not. I was using Tandy Scriptsit before the PC was a gleam in IBM's eyes. It was some years before any PC based word processor could equal the features of Scriptsit, especially the font selection that when selected was viewed onscreen. I remember Wordstar and WordPerfect from the time and wondered hw and who on earth would use them.

Today, I am a heavy user of templates for writing styles as it helps in my profession but formatting within the templates and adding such things as footnotes, etc. all occur after the content is complete. For many writings, I actually use WordPad as it is simple and easy to work with and not bloated allowing faster times and then import the document into the system I've chosen to complete the document with as I use several depending on its purpose and how it will be utilized.

As a professional writer, Marco is exactly right about the process — get the words down first, worry about formatting later. Many of my colleagues use a text editor to write their copy with, and their first choice is the very powerful and customizable UltraEdit text editor. After composing their content there, they just drop the text into OpenOffice and start laying it out, often with the aid of pre-built templates set with styles that include keyboard shortcuts for various headings.

'Start writing. Care only about the content. Don’t be concerned about the fonts, don’t be concerned about font sizes, don’t be concerned about anything but the content'

Gee, I'd like to.
But as soon as I've written a page worth of text, I get a massive ugly gap in my text to show me there's a page break.

Are they EVERY going to implement a 'Normal' view?
It' been sitting in their issue system for ages. (It's http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4914 by the way.)

Reading your comments I got the idea that it could be a great thing for FSM to interview one of the chief developers at OpenOffice and ask these questions (and others as well).

Is any of the contributors of FSM in touch enough with OO devel? In case none is, then maybe we need a new contributor ;-)

Ciao
--bronto

Well, my document is 500 pages long, and no, I don't want to subdivide a master and ever so many small files. I want to be able to zap from page 3 to page 456 to page 297 in a second or two.

I need to, because new biological information is being added all the time, and because the birds in my document are in phylogenetic sequence, and there are almost 10,000 of them, this is a must.

So, what I do is to add data and modify styles as I go along. It's something of an evolutionary process. But the styles I use create the visual ability to USE this document. The writer of the article in OpenOffice seemed to think styles were for prettiness. No way. I need to be able to visually perceive the hierarchical arrangements within the document; I must have styles established from the beginning.

Trouble was, I was betrayed some years ago by Word, after I had mastered its styles very nicely back in Word 5. But Microsoft moved right along and threw out a heck of a lot of what I'd spent a long time learning and a long time formatting.

I was slow to go to all the trouble of relearning it.

Okay, no big problem. Just be careful when you're instructing us. In 2007, I'll have owned and used computers for 20 years. Long enough to know the difference between fonts and typefaces, even if Bill Gates is ignorant on that distinction. So I'll figure out the best ways to do things. I have, for example, my chapter headings which automatically show up with the family heading when I introduce a species in a new family. That was a nice accomplishment.

I wasted a lot of time when I believed some goof that you can easily go back and forth between Word and OpenOffice. No, you can't. Why lie about it? You can't even go back and forth between StarOffice and OpenOffice. Any time you want to disagree, just demonstrate to me, with your own fully-formatted 500-page document, complete with tables and JPGs.

Because if you DON'T mean these things, you might as well keep quiet on the subject. Any idiot can make inter-office memos, and who would care if there were a slight discrepancy, anyway?

I feel a lot of good work has been done. Of course it has. Education was never an easy thing, when done well; my suggestion is simply to never lose sight of the fact that people's livelihoods depend upon their word-processing. Always allow that scientists, as one quick example, need to spend a little bit of time on their fieldwork, instead of all their time on your beloved computer programs. Sometimes I think—no, very often I know—that many computer programmers think people who don't know the tricks of the trade are pretty ignorant. Well, listen, Bub, there are other occupations in the world. Think about it next time you go on vacation, and the pilot asks you to take over flying the jet.

You DO know how to fly a 747, don't you?

—Carson Wade
Canada

I'm sort off veteran in using WP programs. Coming from html style WP's using first generation type WYSIWYG type WP's, I learned lots off different habits to use them. Basically if you need speed, still the writing first and than formatting style (not using mouse features) speeds every thing up. Further on it supports you to use styles and formats consistent.

But it's all kind of how you feel and get into WP. Sometimes one method is in favour of the other. I think Marco only described a small example how to use OpenOffice efficient, starting as a novice.

By the way using the Microsoft way in big Documents assuming 500 pages +, lots ofd formatting and different styles, who was not experiencing trouble?

Marco, I think you made a good job to show how to use OpenOffice. Maybe if you would write something about MS Word your article would look different. But different products equals different advices. And who really cares about MS Office, once decided to us the free way....

Marco, many thanks for your article and keep up to us the italian style...

Frank

Well, the title "Teaching Dummies for Dummies" was intended to cast some light, or to introduce the perspective, that education is not easy, when done well.

The original article here is an educational article. When we attempt to instruct or to teach people, we are working as educators.

As soon as anyone attempts to tell us how to use any computer program, he is opening up two areas of interest: his own points of view, of course; and, inevitably, the global, or universal, views on the subject. We may all prefer to just deal with our own view, but the subject (OpenOffice or any program) carries its own with it. It is something like describing a hippopotamus: as soon as I say that word, you immediately have a picture of a hippo, and I am simply not going to be able to control it within my own terms.

So what I intended to do in my reply was to suggest one example of the kind of perspective common amongst end-users. We have a real split, which you can see all over the internet, between the position of the givers-out of computer information, and the receivers. Again and again, what we end up with is the giver-out satisfying himself that he has made things perfectly clear, and really done a fine job—while the end-user, or receiver, is left dissatisfied, and simply disappears.

There is an ideal in communications theory which is a very good ideal, even though it is almost impossible to live up to it. It is that, if at any time the receiver does not understand, then the fault lies with the speaker. In other words, the fault is always mine; never yours. Or, the fault (really the responsibility, not exactly the fault) always lies with the educator or the disseminator of the information.

Well, that really is a tough one. It seems to suggest any student, no matter how lazy or no matter how dumb, is always in the right; and it was the prof's fault for not getting through to him.

And this is indeed what it means. So, yes, education done well is not easy.

I spend quite a lot of my own time teaching people about computers and programs, although formerly I was involved more in research. I am always trying to find ways to connect the end-user with the system he is using. It's hard, though. There definitely is a persistency among both programmers and instructors to forget the end-user's contributions to their own lives, and to wonder why, for example, he won't just sit down and read the book, or why he won't get, for instance, word processing styles into his head.

Well, it's tough, you know, after a hard day doing surgery.

The best way for any teacher to face a class is to look at his students and to remind himself—each any every time he has the privilege of teaching them—that every one of them is more skilled, more knowledgeable, in something (whatever) than he is. Keeps a good teacher humble.

What we never want to do, ever, is to show that we are right. I suppose being "right" is about the wrongest thing we might ever attempt to do, as educators. We are lucky to find ourselves in positions of sharing; that's all.

So, up above I was hoping to suggest some of the perplexities of the thing. Not Open Office per se, but the difficulties in anyone attempting to address other people's needs regarding it.

Yes, styles work wonderfully well. But, as I said, I was soured myself in having my first mastering of the art of styles outdated when programs changed. Never forgetting that people have other things to do as well, here was an example of needing to go through the learning procedure twice.

To be more specific, I could bring in quite a few examples of OpenOffice (but Microsoft, too, definitely) requiring the end-user change or alter his habits or even become quite a different personality in order to suit the computer program. "Here is a great vacuum cleaner," says the salesman, "but you need three arms to use it."

So our work in progress is not just learning styles, but attempting to bring people together in a way in which the end-user feels very happy indeed—because the customer is always right. The customer is the end-user; the student; or the field worker who simply will not read the book. And no matter what our own wishes as educators, he really is right. That's the only perspective that will work.

I didn't intend to take so much of your time away from Mr. Marongiu's excellent article; for which I apologize. Apparently I failed in my own writing to make myself understood; and according to what I've said myself, that's my own fault.

Let me close with one last thought. It's quite important. We must never attack the person. Only the stupidest of world politicians and their followers do that. People carry ideas in their heads, but it is the ideas themselves, and definitely not the people, that we want to work with. Even when I'm bird-watching, I refer to the "focus bird of the day"—that is, the one you hope most to see—and never the "target bird".

As a Canadian, I feel terrible these days that that paragraph requires any teaching to anyone at all. I am ashamed to be a Canadian now.

Up above, my target, if I were to use that word, would be the perils and perplexities of conveying complex concepts in word-processing to end-users. But it wasn't a target. It was just a perspective.

It was only an idea.

Now let's get back to the original subject. You won't hear from me again. Mr. Marongiu, thank you, and if I return and see you've removed both my posts to conserve the space, no problem at all. Best of luck with your teaching.

Is very hard to say "this is the best solution"

I dream with a wordprocessor that separates all the jobs involved in text production.

WYSIWYG is mere a part of the tools, if you want to write a text you may concentrate on content first or not, this depend on many factors and is not a general law. There are hundreds of categories of text from technicals, literate, office memos, lawyers, etc.

A good program must take in mind that there are many job-types multiplied by
many user-types (experts, novice, etc) and many ways to do the job done.

like an musical instrument .... say simplicity and not "predefined ways"

"viva la diferencia"

There are out there a wordproccessor that separates the visuals from the contents and maybe sintax, check spelling and images and other stuff ?

maybe with various wizards that arrange the text

then you press a key and "preview" all together

and make fine tuning.

I hate MS Word it's mouse-centric

A good word proccesor should be "keyboard-centric" but SIMPLE !!!!