[DerekM]

Originally Posted by johnswhitehead

It seems to me, Derek, that your extended explanations make their own point: it's complex and difficult. I am another user who has bounced off OOP's styling, giving up in mystified frustration when all I want to do is make the document look good. I'm quite prepared to accept that they have a logic that I could master with enough time, it's just that that's not a good use of my time.

Thanks for chiming in. We understand there are feature to the style system that cause confusion. But, the main things I've address in this thread in my opinion have been more about inconstancies or bugs. Perhaps I need to reread everything I've posted though. I have been trying explain how the styles work which is really not that complex but the default behavior may be slightly different then what you're used to.


I am familiar with styles sheets, but unfortunately as far as word processors go I mainly only know MS Word (and I find the PC version better laid out for modifying styles oddly). So when I compare OO to something else, I don't have that much else to draw from.

Originally Posted by johnswhitehead

In some cases one gets to control whether they are what one might term "absolute" -- 14pt Arial Bold -- or "relative" -- 14pt Bold of whatever font is already applied. Character styles can be applied to differentiate text within a paragraph and these typically survive when a new stylesheet is applied to the paragraph. They typically employ a hierarchy (heading 1, heading 2 etc) but there are also non-hierarchical elements for other purposes.

Honestly, to me, you are describing OO's style system. Styles applied to all rows of level x are absolute, anything else more specific is relative. If all rows 1 are Arial pt 12, and then you make a row bold, that row is now bold Arial pt 12. So it would help me to know how this isn't how you see OO's styles.

There are certain features which we've decided was a bad choice, such as much of the automatic features, so what will help us is knowing what other then those things people don't like. I'm under the feeling that those who've given the style system a look at, are put off as the result of either a bug or result of a specific feature that we will get rid of. But once we remove that feature, the basic system will still be the same. If we had the resources to release a version right now that did away with the automatic stuff, we'd put it out to get feedback. But unfortunately that isn't possible so I'm trying to do what I can.

Just so you know, I've actually only been with Omni for about a month now, and as such was not around when this style system was developed, so like you I thrown into this program and had to learn how it works.

Thanks.
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Derek M.
Support Ninja
The Omni Group