On 11/23/2010 2:12 PM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
Well, if you know what a "style" is you are closer to being a word processing "expert" than many - because what you describe is the proper way to use a Word Processor and has been since far back into the hey day of products like WP.
It is always a bear to get users to use the Stylist (as OOo calls it, every word processor has an equivalent). But once you get them around that corner most of the problems disappear and they'll never choose to go back to hacks like highlight-click-bold. It is not more complicated, as they first always complain, its simpler and faster; and as the document grows *way* more managable - or, I take that back - it *is* manageble.
The problem is that the GUI's make the individual formatting too easy to apply so people do it without thinking. No one would consider of using nroff/troff without a macro package and styles are pretty much the equivalent mapping of the high level concepts into the low level grunge that does the work.