Open Office hs a mind of its own

[MAOexWimdows]

Hi,

After having been reduced to tears yet again by Open Office Writer, can anyone please tell me how to set it so that it NEVER EVER makes any changes to the format or layout of the text I have just typed?

[oshunluvr]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

You might get more response at the OOO forums

[toad]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

Or give some more information, 'cos I've been a happy Ooo-writer user for ten years...

My guess is that you are not totally familiar with the concept of styles but you do your formatting "on the fly" like one is encouraged by that other office suite.

Anyway, be it here or over at the Ooo forums - serious, reproducible info is needed in order to find out what is going haywire.

[MAOexWimdows]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

I'm talking about me typing text into the OO word processor, pressing the enter key and it completely changing the format and layout of what I've just typed. MS Word does it and it drives me mad. Why would anyone writing a program think it's users would want something like that to happen But it least in MS Word after much digging it is possible to turn most of that off. That doesn't seem to be possible in OO as far as I can see. So if I start a line with a hyphen for whatever reason, I don't want that when I press the return key to start a new line I fine that if was indented what I have just typed so it doesn't line up with the rest of the text. A 'style' is just another word for the programmer saying 'I know better than you do how your document should look'.

[toad]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

A 'style' is just another word for the programmer saying 'I know better than you do how your document should look'.

What a load of tosh!

But if you don't like that behaviour - and I understand why - rather than click undo or press CTRL+Y you could use kate or abiword...

[arist]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

So if I start a line with a hyphen for whatever reason, I don't want that when I press the return key to start a new line I fine that if was indented what I have just typed so it doesn't line up with the rest of the text.

This is rather unclear: you should try shorter sentences. Are you saying that if you begin a line with a hyphen, then press "Enter", the line you just typed becomes indented? I'm using OO Writer 3.2 and I can't get it to do this. Do you have Bullets or Outlining turned on? Can you give us some other examples of OO's misbehavior?

[bamyasi]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

> I'm using OO Writer 3.2 and I can't get it to do this.

I am using OOo 3.1.1 from PPA and it does this and much more (btw, if you don't mind, where did you get 3.2 for Kubuntu?) Just type at the beginning of the line: <space><hyphen><space><any text> then hit Enter. Writer would automatically apply bullet list style to the previous line and start a new one also as a bulleted item, with the hyphen as a bullet char in front of it. So it's not about styles per se, it's about who's applying those style -- me, or the editor program on its own will. Yes, I also find this Writer behaviour very annoying.

This feature is easy to disable: Format->AutoCorrect->remove check mark on "While Typing". This will disable all autocorrection actions. You can experiment with AutoCorrect Options item on the same menu for more precise tuning. Brute force approach however is the most reliable one from my experience.

[arist]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

(btw, if you don't mind, where did you get 3.2 for Kubuntu?)

I followed the links in this thread and got it directly from the OOo site. I find it considerably faster on start-up than 3.1.

Just type at the beginning of the line: <space><hyphen><space><any text> then hit Enter. Writer would automatically apply bullet list style to the previous line and start a new one also as a bulleted item, with the hyphen as a bullet char in front of it.

Nope, I still can't get it to happen, with or without "Format|Autocorrect|While typing" checked. I tried it out with the various options checked and unchecked under "T" in "Tools|AutoCorrect Options|Options". I'm sure there's a setting somewhere that controls this, but in my case it either was the default or I changed it long ago, because I don't remember ever experiencing this problem.

[josefko]

Re: Open Office hs a mind of its own

having been reduced to tears

I could live with a word processor MS Word or OO Writer, which do formatting for me and I know how to drive them with styles, but because I do not like such a behavior I chose Emacs Muse, where I have everything I write under my control. It does extensive formatting driven by special characters (for example asterics at the beginning of a line means header h1 and the line immediately displays higher), but if I want to see my document without any formatting I can uncheck an option Font Lock and I see everything in plain text - no hidden rules and no styles. It is easy to learn, easy to use and easy to choose output format.

It is not suitable only for documents with complex tables.

Maybe some of you can think that using something like this is a history, but I see that some really new CMS come with that behaviour, using Textile or something similar.