Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rit!cci632!ccicpg!felix!kehr
From: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MS Word 4.0 --- First (and Last) Impressions
Keywords: Bugs
Message-ID: <94926@felix.UUCP>
Date: 3 May 89 13:45:54 GMT
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In article <23846@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> bmug@garnet.berkeley.edu (BMUG) writes:
<In article <8842@polya.Stanford.EDU> shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) writes:
<>One of the things I have wanted in Word is to be able to define a
<>style that affected only the selected text rather than just the
<>paragraph.  For example, it would be useful to have a "Figure
<>Reference" style that could be used within a normal text paragraph,
<>and be able to change all figure reference formatting by just changing
<>the style.
<>
<>Can someone perhaps tell me if a) there is a way to do this in 3.x and
<>earlier versions, or if not b) is it in 4.0?
<
<There is no way to do this in Word 3.0.
<
<I don't believe that there is any way to do this in Word 4.0 (I'm sure
<Chuq will correct me if I'm wrong.
<
<However, there IS a way to do this in Nisus (which will read, incidentally,
<Word 3.0x files which aren't Fast Saved).  Nisus has a "user-defined text
<styles" option on which the user can do searches and formatting changes,
<just as Jonathan describes.
<
<Still waiting for the upgrade which includes footnoting, etc., though...
<
<John Heckendorn
<                                                             /\
<BMUG                      ARPA: bmug@garnet.berkeley.EDU    A__A
<1442A Walnut St., #62     BITNET: bmug@ucbgarnet            |()|
<Berkeley, CA  94709                                         |  |
<(415) 549-2684                                              |  |

There is a way to do it in the PC version of Word too. They have character
styles. I've always wondered if Microsoft was running an experiment with
stylesheet implementation. "Should we let them assign a stylesheet as a
separate entity to any document or should we keep a stylesheet automatically
attached to a document?"

I got elected to head up the style guide committee in our writing group. As
I set up the stylesheet and try to bring the existing documents into 
conformity, I could have really used the ability to copy separate styles
from one document to another.

Another thing that is really irritating is the hoops you have to jump through
to clean up a stylesheet. In deleting the obsolete styles, you can select
only one at a time and each time you cut it the list jumps back to the
beginning. Now scroll down to the next one to be deleted and go through this
process all over again. Really fun when you have to delete up to 20 styles
from up to 20 documents and still meet production deadlines!

I doubt if more convenience in this area is a big enough issue for most
people to put it high on the list of fixes, but Microsoft should realize
that we can't just create the perfect stylesheet once. Updating a style-
sheet after you decide on some different conventions takes a lot of
determination and patience, especially since every manual has many chapters
each of which is a different document.

Shirley Kehr