Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!ethz!zeller
From: zeller@ethz.UUCP (Lukas Zeller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MS Word 4.0 --- First (and Last) Impressions
Keywords: Bugs
Message-ID: <871@ethz.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 89 14:38:36 GMT
References: <3914@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM> <29495@apple.Apple.COM> <3939@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM> <29844@apple.Apple.COM> <8842@polya.Stanford.EDU> <23846@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <94926@felix.UUCP> <3266@cs.dal.ca>
Reply-To: zeller@bernina.UUCP (Lukas Zeller)
Organization: ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 38

In article <3266@cs.dal.ca> gergely@xx.drea.dnd.ca (Peter J Gergely) writes:
>
>About copying separate styles from one document to another:
>
>The procedure is simple, open the document from which you want to copy
>the styles as a normal document.  Select one or more paragraphs that
>have the styles you want to copy.  Copy them to the clipboard, and
>paste them into the document you want the new styles in.
>
>There is a caveat though.  If there is a style in the new document
>with the same name, its formatting is replaced by the one pasted in.
>This also presents a bug if there are paragraphs having modifications
>based on that style, as they default back to the raw style.  For
>example, a normal paragraph with different indents may revert back to
>being normal.                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>^^^^^^^^^^^^

In my opinion, this is one of the most dangerous bugs in Word 3.xx. The
problem can be generalized as follows:
If *any* style in a document is deleted, replaced or merged with another
style, *all* extra paragraph formatting based on *any* style may be deleted,
and not only those paragraphs formatted using the style being modified. I
write "may be deleted" because often it happens  but sometimes it does not.
However, if it happens with a certain document/style configuration once, the
error can be reproduced. To be sure, I just tried it again: I deleted a
*completely unused* style (no paragraph formatted with, no other style based
on it) and all the extra paragraph formatting (tabs, borders, margins etc.)
disappeared. No way to get it back, if you don't have a backup copy of the
document. I considered this as UGLY in 3.02 and I'll consider it even UGLIER
if they did not fix in 4.0. I can only *hope* they did, because I didn't get
my update yet. Any comments from you lucky (?) 4.0 users out there ?

==========================  +---------------------------+  *****************
      Lukas Zeller          |\         E-Mail:         /|  * Never trust a *
 ETH Zurich, Switzerland    | \_______________________/ |  *   computer    *
  (SFIT, Swiss Federal      |  /  zeller@ethz.UUCP   \  |  *  bigger than  *
 Institute of Technology)   | / ..cernvax!ethz!zeller \ |  * you  can lift *
==========================  +---------------------------+  *****************