Issue 3395 - Reveal formatting codes
Summary: Reveal formatting codes
Status: CLOSED WONT_FIX
Alias: None
Product: Writer
Classification: Application
Component: formatting (show other issues)
Version: 641
Hardware: All Windows 2000
: P3 Normal with 202 votes (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords: rfe_eval_ok, usability
: 2216 6489 14694 23487 28997 34876 45591 50501 62817 74332 81267 (view as issue list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2002-03-07 22:11 UTC by dannetts
Modified: 2017-05-20 10:11 UTC (History)
25 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


Attachments
ODT document for my last post. (7.63 KB, application/vnd.sun.xml.writer)
2006-04-10 23:24 UTC, mestech
no flags Details
Screen Capture of Jannz Reveal Code for reference. (34.66 KB, image/png)
2006-04-10 23:26 UTC, mestech
no flags Details
A "View > Styles Location" idea graphic. (154.85 KB, image/png)
2006-04-10 23:27 UTC, mestech
no flags Details
Word_2003.png (18.42 KB, image/png)
2007-02-10 10:53 UTC, norbert2
no flags Details
Example of WP's RC (156.88 KB, text/plain)
2007-11-08 05:20 UTC, irneb
no flags Details
Firebug screenshot, reveals formatting of "50 million downloads!" (189.92 KB, image/png)
2009-04-23 08:28 UTC, jarl
no flags Details
Example of element / formatting tags for XML (5.11 KB, image/png)
2009-04-29 17:09 UTC, irneb
no flags Details
Explanation of RC Alternative (24.88 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2010-02-19 04:55 UTC, irneb
no flags Details
Example of an OpenOffice ODT document (from a WPD) read back into WP and shown with Reveal Codes (90.77 KB, image/png)
2012-04-17 17:45 UTC, orcmid
no flags Details
Extracts of the ODF document showing how the same text shown in attachment #77454 is formatted in ODF via an OpenOffice-lineage application (4.59 KB, application/xml)
2012-04-17 18:07 UTC, orcmid
no flags Details

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Description dannetts 2002-03-07 22:11:51 UTC
One of the good things about WordPerfect is its "reveal codes" feature whereby 
one can see the limits of formatting and any nested formatting that has taken 
place over the document's history.

Inclusion of such a feature would significantly improve the useability of 
OpenOffice's Word Processor & give it a distinct advantage in WYSIWYG output 
over MSWord.
Comment 1 stefan.baltzer 2002-03-11 15:57:33 UTC
Reassigned to Christian.
Comment 2 foskey 2002-07-22 23:52:05 UTC
*** Issue 6489 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 3 christian.jansen 2003-02-11 16:25:41 UTC
Reassigned to Bettina.
Comment 4 arnohamel 2003-03-05 13:29:31 UTC
The main feature that make me stick to WordPerfect is the Reveal Codes
feature, that allows to find and change/eliminate any code, so that
the document ends "cleaner" and with a much better control of features.
I cannot help with programming, but Im sure that this enhancement
will be much appreciated in OpenOffice or any other program that
possesses it.
Comment 5 thepriz 2003-05-20 01:05:49 UTC
I would also like to say that this would be a great feature to add to
OO. I have used WP for over 10 years now and haven't used anything
else becase of this feature. I don't think the idea would be to hard
to implement because the file format is xml but I am not sure how OO
stores the file internally.
Comment 6 owendelong 2003-05-20 03:40:30 UTC
This should be a very low priority.  Styles provide a more than adequate solution to
most of the things that this crutch is designed to solve.  Arguably, enabling this
crutch would further encourage bad formatting habbits.
Comment 7 dannetts 2003-05-20 04:57:17 UTC
I disagree.  Most (IMHO) formatting problems arise from the
wordprocessor applying styles where it "thinks" they are appropriate
as distinct from where they are intended.

Being able to view & edit formatting codes takes all the guesswork
out; life is much more dull, but a whole lot more productive.
Comment 8 Unknown 2003-05-20 23:23:21 UTC
The "Reveal Codes" should be a really good enhancement.
I work frequently with styles, and sometimes I stay puzzled
when my clicks don't work.
If I can see what's happening in document source I should guess 
better what to do. 
See what's happening in the xml zipped file is good, but show it with 
a menu command would be wonderfull.
Ps. I never used WordPerfect....
Comment 9 royalozma 2003-06-04 13:20:47 UTC
I've even gone far as by editing the document styles in my personal
documents to include colour to show some visual markup of the styles
(similiar to syntax highlighting in Developer's IDEs). Thus I can
easily see what styles are applied to what text.


If you've not realized about this. One can emulate reveal codes by...

Using one (rough draft) stylesheet which is modified with colour to
give the document a visualized markup look-&-feel.

Then apply another (final draft) stylesheet which does not have the
above colour markup, before printing out the document or rendering to PDF.

With reveal codes, you don't have to go through the above
"stylesheet-change" rituals, nor have to prepare those two seperate
stylesheets.

DISCLAIMER! I don't use WordPerfect.
Comment 10 oblomov 2003-08-17 23:59:38 UTC
Styles are not a solution that make Reveal Codes unnecessary. I 
consider myself a WordPerfect middle-powered user, I make extensive 
use of styles and I find Reveal Codes indispensable.

I believe that Reveal Codes *can* be implemented in Writer, and I'm 
designing a draft to describe how it can be implemented. The draft is 
available here:

http://digilander.libero.it/bilotta/giuseppe/rc-proposal.sxw

Interestingly, while writing the draft (in Writer, with Styles) I had 
to curse often just because of the lack of the feature, so ...

(Finally, the owner of this issue or any other moderator should set 
the O/S to "All" (and pump up the version, since the need is still 
there in OOo 1.1 ...), or can these things be done by anybody?)
Comment 11 bulbul 2003-08-18 01:33:34 UTC
(Don't pump up the version. The version is just to show which version
the problem was first identified with.)
Comment 12 tamblyne 2003-08-22 04:40:45 UTC
I have to vote for this one.  As an old Word Perfect user, I really miss being able 
to see what's going on "behind the scenes".  I have to agree that the application of 
styles is NOT a substitute for being able to see exactly what formatting codes are 
being applied, and where.   
 
For instance, this feature would save a lot of time trying to hunt down an unwanted 
hard page break.  Right now, the only way I know of to find and remove it is to hit 
delete from the top (or backspace from the bottom) until the text from the next 
page moves up.  This unfortunately, in most cases, also removes the style applied 
to the text that has moved up, and possibly a character or two, and so the text has 
to be re-typed and the style set again.   
Comment 13 thepriz 2003-11-26 19:32:08 UTC
Along with the Word Perfect Filters that have a high vote count this 
feature has not been included in the release specifications for "Q". 
This requested enhancement is in the top 13 voted on issues. I guess 
requested features which have high votes are not looked at unless 
whoever makes the decisions thinks it is important to them. I would 
request that this be included in the "Q" release of OO because of the 
amount of interest by end users.
Comment 14 lohmaier 2003-12-12 16:05:43 UTC
*** Issue 23487 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 15 ksevern 2004-02-04 17:21:23 UTC
Reveal codes is a key element to gaining support from anyone who is technically
minded. These people like to look under the hood and see why things are working
the way they do. They want to control the document. Those who don't think this
way will probably never turn on this feature, but it will be very handy when
they take their messed up document to their 'geek' friend to have him fix it for
them.

Every time I used MSWord it was because I had to and I hated it. Sooner or later
some formatting goes amiss and you need to throw some part of the document away
to fix it. Now I have Open Office, but the Writer was patterned after MSWord so
I don't like it either. This feature will help add the missing control that I
need to produce precise documents.
Comment 16 rblackeagle 2004-02-04 19:42:31 UTC
If you want to see what's going on "behind the scenes", unzip an .sxw file and
take a look at the files.  Everything's there.
Comment 17 rblackeagle 2004-02-04 19:44:37 UTC
Sorry!  That was incomplete.  If you need to or want to make changes to the
unzipped files, you can.  Then rezip them and rename them as .sxw files.

Easier, if what you want is productivity instead of curiosity or interest in the
guts of the program: Mark the area where the error is, select Format > Default
and reorganize them by modifying the relevant styles or edit them inline.
Comment 18 ksevern 2004-02-04 22:14:25 UTC
How convenient!
Comment 19 wmoran 2004-02-25 14:19:52 UTC
I add my vote for this.
I think it goes beyond being a good idea ... I think it's a necessity for an
open source program.  A lot of folks have posted excellent workarounds for
seeing the gory details of the formatting, but these are all for _technical_
people (things like unzipping the file and editing the raw XML).  One of the
things I noticed when I used to support WordPerfect users is that reveal codes
allowed non-technical users the level of control that was usually reserved for
technical people.  The fact is, a reveal codes feature isn't for technical
users, it's for all users, and the ones who don't have the ability to unzip the
file and read through the raw XML are the ones who will benefit the most!
I'm interested in helping the coding effort to develop this, but I'm not
familiar with the OOo codebase, so there'll be quite a learning curve for me.
Comment 20 rblackeagle 2004-02-25 16:31:26 UTC
Okay, a little indication of my own experience.  I went from Word to WP and got
a lot of good from "Reveal Codes" as it helped me find mistakes in formatting,
extraneous format coding and so on.  It was far superior to Word in that, for
Word, sometimes the screwed-up coding simply could not be fixed.  With WP, I
could spend ten to fifteen minutes, find the offending code and delete or
correct it.  It didn't take very long if the mistake was close to the text that
concerned me, but the main use was for an error a couple or more lines away from
where the error became apparent.

With OOo, at one time I had a real problem with screwed-up code and found no way
to make sense of the encodings in the unzipped file.  I, too, advocated "Reveal
Codes" as a solution.  Then I discovered something that completely eliminated my
need for "Reveal Codes."

The purpose of "Reveal Codes" is to correct errors in the hidden formatting of
the document.  For the user, if the error can be eliminated, there is no need
for "Reveal Codes," yet we have all had situations where there where such things
as <B><B>text</B> and removing the Bold from the text now produces an entire
document in bold (up to the next </B>) since there is a doubled <B> command. 
What to do?

That is where OOo's solution is actually superior (that is to say, much faster)
than "Reveal Codes."  Instead of taking the time to open the "Reveal Codes"
window, locate the offending code and removing it, we can simply select the area
with the problem, then enter Alt-O,D (Format > Default) and all character and
paragraph (if an entire paragraph is marked) formatting is removed and we're
left with the default formatting.  Now we can reset the formatting the way we
want it and our problem is solved.

I am a professional writer, which means I make a lot of writing mistakes daily.
 I have this kind of problem maybe once or twice a week and the Format > Default
has proven MUCH faster and more efficient than "Reveal Codes."

All the original discussion about this topic had to do with finding and locating
mistaken format encoding and almost all of us who commented on it had experience
with "Reveal Codes."  The developers tried to let us know that the entire
structure of OOo was NOT well designed to implement "Reveal Codes," as opposed
to WP which was designed from the ground up with that feature in mind.  In fact,
it would have meant a complete redesign of the core structure of OOo, which was
why they were not inclined to introduce it.

It was not a developer who pointed out the use of Format > Default to me, but an
ordinary user.  It was a revelation to me because, using that solution, I had no
need for the more time-consuming "Reveal Codes."

Re-writing millions of lines of code to satisfy those who want to see the codes
is far more a chore than opening the zipped files that make up the .sxw files
and correcting formatting or positioning problems and, for the headaches of
graphic and table placement, it remains almost the only solution (the developers
are working on those issues).  But for the normal user need, Format > Default is
superior to "Reveal Codes."  To reiterate, I claim superiority for OOo's
solution based on speed, time needed to correct an error and reduced frustration.
Comment 21 thepriz 2004-02-25 18:40:18 UTC
I have to disagree with the previous person. Yes there are a lot of technical
workarounds for reveal codes, but they are not a good solution for this. I also
agree that removing all formating will work also, however this is also a waste
of time unlike what the previous person has said. I have done this procedure and
found it more time consuming to reformat my text when I could have simply
removed the offending code instead of reformating my document or the offending
text. I also think that the number of people who use word perfect that look at
this product who understand the importance of this feature will not use this
product completely unless they are forced to do so. I know many WP users who
will not convert to Word or OO because they do not have this feature. They are
profesional writers who work on long documnets every day. This is a feature that
is a must for them and for me.

Have you ever imported a doucument with some of these fiters or cut and pasted
form one document to another. I have and honestly it does not work very well in
any Word Processor, but with reveal codes it is easy to clean up the document in
a fairly fast time without having to redo all the formating.

I respect that some people love to redo things over and over again but it is
much easier to fix a few offending things than redo all the formating.

The sad thing is this is one of the top 10 voted on issues for OO and it has not
been addressed by the core developers. It seems that this really is not a
community directed project but a project directed by the developers.
Comment 22 ejvindh 2004-03-12 12:37:28 UTC
If I have understood the technical side of the discussion correct, a "reveal
Codes"-functionality could easily be applied on the file-format (cf rblackeagle
Wed Feb 25 08:31:26 -0800 2004), but that there is a technical problem in
relation to how OO implement it with the screen-funcionality of OO. Cf:

http://wp.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=682

I was wondering: Would it be possible (perhaps only as a temporary solution) to
build a small tool (that can be activated from within OO) that makes a second
screen pop-up, showing the unpacked (and perhaps slightly translated) codes that
rblackeagle is talking about, and making it possible to edit these codes.

In the outset, there will of course be a problem about SEEING how the changes
affects the actual text in the WYSIWYG-window (at least if you scroll to parts
of the text that are not presently visible in the WYSIWYG-window). But a further
development could perhaps let the "tool" send information back to the
WYSIWYG-window about where the cursor is situated, and let it scroll down to the
same placement. Then the two windows could be shown simultanously, and if the
new tool is situated in the bottom of the screen, it would be difficult to see
the difference from the original WP-"reveal codes".

It is just an idea. Unfortunately I am not a programmer, so I don't know whether
it would solve the problem??

Ejvind Hansen
Comment 23 rblackeagle 2004-03-12 17:07:48 UTC
Interesting suggestion, and it would satisfy the needs of those whose need for
"Reveal Codes" comes about from more complicated issues than a simple doubling
of formatting code.  It also sounds like a possible solution.  The hard
programming task would be to coordinate the position of the coding file with the
position of the formatted text file in the other window.

Unfortunately, I can envision all sorts of complaints based on the fact that the
XML coding is far different from the coding found in WP's "Reveal Codes."  There
would also be a new set of complaints for this change or that one to the coding
features.  That would dilute developer interest in other serious debugging and
enhancement issues, unless we got a new development team of experts in both WP
and OOo -- something that would NOT distract from other development.
Comment 24 rblackeagle 2004-03-12 18:32:45 UTC
I continue to think about this.  I have never had an occasion using OOo where
I've had to change coding on more than a few words, although I can envision
perhaps a paragraph.  If more changes need to be done than that, it would seem
to be due to a refusal to learn how to use styles rather than a real need for
"Reveal Codes."

I HAVE noticed that some people seem to have an almost religious opposition to
learning how to use styles (which are really easy) I suspect because they are so
poorly implemented in WP and MS Office.  In OOo, they are easy to use and allow
complete reformating of an entire document with minimal effort.

If a person is having massive problems with bad formatting issues affection more
than a paragraph, I would direct that person to one of the many available
documents on how to use styles.  I believe I was one of those who resisted
because of my bad experiences with them in both WP and MS Word, but it took me
less than three days to master their basic uses and I keep discovering new and
creative ways to use them years later.

(I just learned how to custom-design new fonts based on existing ones using styles.)
Comment 25 dehuszar 2004-03-12 20:15:25 UTC
We are only using WordPerfect in our office because of this feature.  All other 
machines which people mostly use for browsing and light work all have OOo on 
it.  If this feature were added, we'd throw all our old WP and Office discs 
away.

Samuel deHuszar Allen
Comment 26 lohmaier 2004-05-13 22:05:33 UTC
*** Issue 28997 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 27 frgovedich 2004-05-19 07:09:09 UTC
I have been using WordPerfect as my primary word processor for over a 15 years
and I still use it for my current work (I started with the old DOS version,
Windows versions and use the Linux version today). The ONLY reason I still use
it is because of the Reveal Codes. I am a research Biologist, I have tried MS
Word (hate it) and Open Office Writer but the fact that there is no way to see
the codes has kept and will continue to keep me from changing over to Open
Office writer completely. Don't get me wrong I like the fact the Open Office is
here (I even tried out the first Star Office before Open Office)! When I have to
use Word documents I use Open Office, I also use the Spreadsheet and
Presentation packages regularly, but not the Writer.

I write both large and small documents all of the time. I have used paragraph
styles (don't really like them). In some documents I have to use several
different paragraph styles and changing the paragraph style is not the solution
to the problem!  In fact it can make the problem worse! I write scientific
documents, including papers, books, data sheets and other manuscripts with lots
of different formatting needs, and I can do it very quickly and easily in
WordPerfect, messing with paragraph styles can cause problems with other parts
of the same paragraph or document.

If Open Office Writer is going to become the dominant word processor it need a
function like Reveal Codes.

Dr. Fredric Govedich
Comment 28 lohmaier 2004-06-11 11:12:15 UTC
*** Issue 2216 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 29 bettina.haberer 2004-06-17 11:10:49 UTC
As this feature does not belong to the keyfeatures planned for Q, there is no
chance to get that intgrated into OO.o 2.0, it also would mean an extensive
rebuilding for Writer. But is it an often asked and sensefull request for the
next milestone. Hello Andreas, please take over this highly voted enhancement
for concidering it for the next milestone. Thank you.
Comment 30 andreas.martens 2004-06-17 12:57:19 UTC
Yes, we will consider this. There are some advantages from reveal codes. We
should implement reveal codes or find another intuitive methods to show
character attributes and to put the cursor into or behind character attributes
and so on...
Comment 31 iannz 2004-06-18 01:56:35 UTC
I am writing an open source "reveal codes" macro for Writer. I have posted two
versions for discussion on my OOo web page:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/
I have started a discussion thread about it in the Writer forum:
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=36976

I would really like some feedback on this, otherwise I will simply drop it as
not being of interest to anyone. If what I have done is hopeless I would like to
know that too so that I don't waste any more time on it.

Cheers, Ian Laurenson
Comment 32 ejvindh 2004-06-18 12:47:40 UTC
>>>ama
Nice to hear that the feature has now been accepted for implementation. I think
that most of us already had realized that it was unrealistic to hope for it in
the 2.0-version.

>>> Ian Laurenson
This really looks very promising!!! I have had a short look into it, but will
not report my comments before I have had a closer look into it. But to all you
other RC-fans: DO take a look into Ian's post and forward your oppinions to him.
As is clear from bh & ama's comments, we cannot count on this feature in the
main program in the near future.
Comment 33 fbax 2004-07-30 18:37:18 UTC
How does ths issue relate to RevealCodes project:
http://wp.openoffice.org/rcodes.html
Comment 34 sgautier.ooo 2004-09-07 10:56:49 UTC
reassigning & adding keywords according to new RFE process - Sophie
Comment 35 sgautier.ooo 2004-09-07 10:58:29 UTC
adding keywords according to new RFE process - Sophie
Comment 36 lohmaier 2004-10-11 17:39:59 UTC
*** Issue 34876 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 37 eric.savary 2005-03-21 02:56:04 UTC
*** Issue 45591 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 38 taing 2005-03-27 05:20:44 UTC
I too would like to express my desire to see WP style reveal codes added to OO.
Reveal code is what keeps me using WP. I find if indespensible when trying to
figure out where "the other guy" bungled the formatting.
Comment 39 mestech 2005-04-06 16:12:02 UTC
I will add my support for Reveal Codes as well.

Reveal codes could have saved hours of work on converting a few MS Office
documents.  Styles did weird things as the documents original imported formats
were strange as well.

I am going to try Ian Laurenson's macros.
Comment 40 umr5174 2005-05-31 07:35:45 UTC
Please change OS to "all".
Comment 41 lohmaier 2005-06-08 17:31:47 UTC
*** Issue 50501 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 42 jmcruz 2005-06-09 11:11:49 UTC
***** 
Please, change the summary of this issue to "Reveal formatting codes" to help 
avoid duplicate requests! 
***** 
 
I am strongly in favor of this feature, which I had no idea WPerfect already 
implemented. 
I have recently proposed the same feature (Issue 50501, rigthly marked as a 
duplicate by "cloph") and compared it so "source mode" in HTML, or the editing 
window of TeX. 
 
For the time being, as far as Informatics is concerned, the best of software 
as far as a user is concerned is to have _both_ worlds: good WYSIWYG features 
and good "under the hood" features control. 
Comment 43 lohmaier 2005-06-09 20:47:39 UTC
adding "formatting" to summary as suggested.
Comment 44 mestech 2005-09-07 16:56:44 UTC
Today while commenting on moving over to OOo, it was raised that lack of Reveal
Codes is an issue that is causing the move to be questioned.   

I notice that many people that are "Pro Styles" have not worked with RC so don't
understand the usefulness of this tool.  I have used Styles and in many cases,
they can be very useful but in many cases, Styles can be a serious pain.  Of
course I have to have the time to learn how to make fine grain adjustments to
the needed style to meet my needs on a particular document.

I came across an analogy for RC over Styles or along with Styles.  When editting
a photo, sometimes a tool that processes the whole photo is great and useful. 
Some tools give you a finer control over regions of a photo.  If you do a
repeated procedure over and over, a script can be written to save time and
energy.  But if you only need to make small changes that are slightly different
in each photo, you won't write a script, you will work at a pixel or small
region level.  This is the same with RC's.  

RC's give you the ability to make quick small changes without having to write
the script to make the changes.  It is a pain to be making a one-of document,
only to find that you have to create or edit a style to get the correct
formatting for two lines out of 7 pages.

Another point about reveal codes is you can find hidden formatting that is
affecting you printing or importing a document.  I have had cases where I have
imported a document only to find that I cannot change the formatting to get the
document to work in OOo because I cannot find the code that is causing my
problem in an "EASY" manner as with reveal codes.

I tried Ian Laurenson's macros but had problems installing them in OOo 2.0b.  I
will keep trying.  Now to learn macro editting.

FWIW, one happy convert from Word to OOo because of MS's autoformatting
headaches but they want reveal codes.
Comment 45 nigelenki 2005-09-09 06:16:33 UTC
Allow the reveal codes to show style information.  Lots of old word perfect
users liked this a lot.

Count styles as their own formatting.  Reveal styles, both paragraph and
character; don't detail the styles in the reveal codes.  Reveal formatting where
formatting is applied raw.

This was requested of me personally, and I found it's been requested before. 
It's a popular bug, look at the votes.
Comment 46 nigelenki 2005-09-09 07:23:32 UTC
Allow the reveal codes to show style information.  Lots of old word perfect
users liked this a lot.

Count styles as their own formatting.  Reveal styles, both paragraph and
character; don't detail the styles in the reveal codes.  Reveal formatting where
formatting is applied raw.

This was requested of me personally, and I found it's been requested before. 
It's a popular bug, look at the votes.
Comment 47 mestech 2005-09-09 15:32:11 UTC
Lack of reveal codes is also a deal killer for many would be users.  I know of
one person that has used OOo and loves it, except for RC.

It is like a tool that you use everyday.  Lose it and you feel totally lost or
useless.  When it comes to formatting problems, OOo is better than MS Word but
worse than WordPerfect.
Comment 48 ace_dent 2006-03-06 18:24:26 UTC
*** Issue 62817 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 49 mestech 2006-03-22 23:13:02 UTC
From the discussion about Reveal Codes on the Users mail list I have some
thoughts to add.

As all the formatting properties are stored as styles tokens (T1-Tx) in the
content.xml, and thus must be in memory, make this information available in a
simple dialog.

As one user suggested, a properties map that reveals the various styles and
formatting properties used at the cursor location would be a great help.  I feel
that this would be almost as good as reveal codes.  Moving the cursor could
indicate where a formatting property changes.  Add the ability to change or
delete properties within this pop-up box and now you have a type of reveal
codes.  Or at least take you to the property that made this change.  I know that
some info is displayed in various locations but that is a pain.

As a test I made a simple document that had some formatting changes and examined
the content.xml file to see what happened when I made changes.  What I see is a
simple way to display all the information about formatting in an easy way.  If
Jannz's macro can display this info, why not make an integrated tool to do a
better job.

I also suggest that there be a menu or added feature to show where the
formatting makes changes within a document.  Selecting View > Non-Printing
Characters will show some formatting features.  A second choice of showing the
formatting (T1-Tx) token positions, would also help.  Especially when trying to
find that one piece of code that was imported that screwed up your whole document.

There is no reason to stick with the answer that this is how they do it in Word
so this is how we will do it.  I think we need to look at how OOo can be made
better.

Reveal codes are better for people that do not have total control over all
aspects of a document and have to work with multiple sources and formats and
hopefully get into a single working format.
Comment 50 mestech 2006-03-23 17:13:15 UTC
Further to the suggestion.

After some thinking.  Reveal Codes is a way of showing the formatting at a
particular location within the document.  In OOo, this is the collected
formatting of the document that make up the various properties as set by the styles.

A properties display box that is similiar to the Styles and Formatting box could
solve most of the reveal codes demands.

A display box that shows the relevant stlyles used, fonts and font controls in a
simple box.  A box that allows the cursor to be moved and the dialog updates as
the cursor moves.  This box then could allow someone to change, remove or edit
the style as in the Styles and Formatting box.

Now people can say that this feature is already available but not in an easy to
use way.  Someone could search through their style and formatting box for each
and every character location and not find that one point where the formatting is
wrecked.

My suggestion would be a box that floats or attaches at the bottom or top of the
screen.  Like the Reveal codes box on WP.  In the box would be something like this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Page style:  Index                Paragraph style: Contents 4
Character style:  Placeholder     Frame style:  Default
Lists style:  Default             Font:  Times new Roman  B U I
-------------------------------------------------------------------

If the cursor is moved and the font changes due to the Character style, then
this information would be quickly seen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Page style:  Index                Paragraph style: Contents 4
Character style:  Placeholder 2   Frame style:  Default
Lists style:  Default             Font:  Nimubus Roman  B U I
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the person will know that the formattng change was due to the change in the
Character style without having to go through all the various dialogs.  A simple
indication of where the change is.  Now the user could decide to delete, change
or modify the style Character style.  This dialog must update with the cursor
movements.

I feel that this dialog box would resolve most of the Reveal Code demands within
the framework of how OOo works with documents.
Comment 51 mestech 2006-03-28 17:11:21 UTC
Looking at this XML coding from a test document, I want to expand on the ability
to work in the current framework of OOo to create a dialog box similiar to
reveal codes.

----  Style defenition.

<style:style style:name="T3" style:family="text"><style:text-properties
fo:font-style="italic" style:text-underline-style="solid"
style:text-underline-width="auto" style:text-underline-color="font-color"
style:font-style-asian="italic" style:font-style-complex="italic"/>

------  Location that the style is implemented.

<text:span text:style-name="T3">another </text:span>

-------

Now if there was an option to reveal the locations of the "span" statements that
were live or clickable or with the attributes displayed in a dialog box at the
bottom/top of the screen, then most of what those that are requesting Reveal
Codes is implemented.

The individual style number (T3) could be highlited or indicated in some way.  
Thus if styles are nested, then users would be able to see them.

I think the idea of live icons would be better than the WP of reveal codes as
this could show the nesting over a larger span than just a few lines of text. 
As in the above case, more than the change to italic is supplied within the
style defenition.
Comment 52 w3bnr 2006-03-28 17:39:36 UTC
While 'style sheets' may be fine for Corporations and small businesses who need
standardization in documentation and correspondence,  I find that for most
personal use 'style sheets' are more of a hindrance the help.

I've used bothe M$ Word and WP almost forever.  Started with WP 5.1 in DOS and
used M$Word as a Corporate *must* for many years before retiring.  My reports
had to be in a standard format and Word fitted that bill.  Not many styles to
worry about.

Now that I have 'free rein' in what I write I do it all in WP, version 12 and
still going strong.  I can manipulate words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and
pages as I need to without worrying about which style to select.

Yes, OO is a great product and I am using the other functions, but not Writer.  

I've casted my votes for this enhancement.
Comment 53 jmcruz 2006-03-29 09:57:02 UTC
The whole issue of "reveal codes" has been thoroughly discussed in list       
"users@openoffice.org" and, I'm sure, in other lists over and over again.      
Please, let's stop it! What is the matter with us all?      
I have yet to see someone say: "I am quite satisfied with the way OOo allows      
the users to control the the formating of documents; nothing should be      
changed!"      
There is a general consensus for the development of better (more powerful and     
easier to use) tools for the the control of the formatting of documents (with 
or without styles). E.g.     
«(...)Still, a list containing any formatting at the current cursor position      
(or applied throughout a selected area or selected areas) would not be      
unwelcome.(...)»     
Even though people say: «(...) there are no codes  to reveal.», the fact is 
that formatting codes _can_ be created and  shown! The famous Ian Laurenson's 
"Reveal Codes macro" proves it, and the same proof is obtained by doing 
Format->Paragraph, for instance!   
So, my request/suggestion to the people that (knows how to) write code to OOo   
is: “please, develop a tool that «provides a viewing/editing mode that shows 
ALL the "hidden" formatting info of a OOo document and in a way that could be   
changed by a power user.» [jmcruz, Issue 50501] “ 
 
And, as a final request:  
*****   
Please, change the summary of this issue to "Show formatting info" to please 
the folks that say: «How many times must it be said ... there are no codes to 
reveal.» 
*****   
Many thanks! 
Comment 54 andypep 2006-03-29 13:57:01 UTC
Having seen the discussion on the users list recently, I fear that this issue 
will never go away and will never be satisfactorily implemented for the WP 
die-hards. 
 
At each point in the text of a document, the appearance is defined by a _set_ 
of attributes (font, colour, language, margins, indentation, background colour 
etc.) 
 
As I understand it from the comments made, reveal codes indicate how this set 
is built up by applying them from some default by processing the text from the 
beginning of the document. 
 
In a style-oriented writer, the set of attributes is built up by following the 
definitions of a style along its parent derivation tree from some default at 
its root. In effect, each character is given the _whole_set_ of attributes at 
the _same_time_, and that set is called its style (simplifying wildly). 
 
These two approaches are so different, that just writing a translator from one 
form to the other must be a challenging exercise. Asking either to look like 
the other in the GUI seems inappropriate if not actually technically 
infeasible. 
 
I can see the way that people are using reveal codes, and that imported text 
can mess things up, and so there is a need to see where an attribute last 
appeared. The equivalent in OOo would be to discover where in the style tree a 
particular attribute was last given its value. The current values can be seen 
by looking at the current style definition, but it is not easy to check up the 
tree for a given attribute (say language, or italic, etc.) But the need would 
be for a tree description _per_attribute_; trying to show it for all 
attributes simultaneously would be an excessive amount of information. An 
alternative would be to have on all tabs in the style dialogs a button that 
jumped immediately to the parent so the differences can be seen. 
 
I am not an OOo developer so what I say should be taken with the appropriate 
grain of salt. But my guess is that trying to display anything resembling 
reveal codes is not worth the effort that would have to be put into it, and 
will be a drain on maintenance activity and testing forever. But an 
improvement in the dialogs showing how an attribute came to be applied by 
explicitly displaying the tree might be possible. 
 
Please correct any misconceptions I might have. 
 
Comment 55 mestech 2006-04-10 23:22:34 UTC
I have read and re-read the styles documents for OOo and I still feel that a
tool to provide a Reveal Codes type of interface for the styles would be a handy
tool, even when using styles.

In the Users discussion, it was brought up that you can sometimes notice code
changes when looking at View > Non-printing characters.  This is true but raises
the question, if styles are so good and perfect at controlling the formatting,
why would you need to view any non-printing characters?  But that is another
discussion.  This is one reason why I feel that there should be a View > Styles
location tool.

I will be uploading a sample document that I created two images from.

The first image is of JannzRevealCode macro.  What this show is a good
representation of WP reveal codes but doesn't reflect the styles that are
present within the document.

The second image is the sample document with added graphics representing the
idea of "View > Formatting points" showing where the formatting changes and the
type of style being applied.  I didn't get to complicated due to time.

At the bottom is a dialog box that displays the styles being used with the
particular defenition from the content.xml file from where the cursor is placed
within "formatting".  Now if you look at the line inbetween Para1 and Para2, you
will notice that there is a text formatting.   This formatting expands over a
single character (space).  It is little things like this that can cause problems
for people doing allot of cutting and pasting between different documents and
types of documents.

Added info from OOo documents.
----
From Introduction to Styles.

Page 25

Migrating to character styles.

Never mix character styles and manual formatting.  Manual formatting supersedes
character styles.  If you combine them, you may end up wasting hours in
frustration trying to figure out why your characters styles don't work.
---
This raises the question if OOo recommends the direct formatting should not be
used, why are the direct formatting buttons provided in the menu bar?

--
From Working with Styles

Page 2

Many people manually format paragraphs, words, tables, page layouts, and other
parts of their documents without paying any attention to styles.  They are used
to writing documents according to physical attributes.
---------

This is exactly the reason why this discussion will continue.  Direct formatting
tools are provided and thus the situation of mixed formatting can create
headaches.  OOo provides a tool to make a mess of styles by default.

-------

I have used styles and in many cases I will use them.  But many times styles are
not necssary for the type of work I do.  I need to make minor changes to a
document that has been imported into OOo from another source.

Comment 56 mestech 2006-04-10 23:24:32 UTC
Created attachment 35622 [details]
ODT document for my last post.
Comment 57 mestech 2006-04-10 23:26:01 UTC
Created attachment 35623 [details]
Screen Capture of Jannz Reveal Code for reference.
Comment 58 mestech 2006-04-10 23:27:48 UTC
Created attachment 35624 [details]
A "View > Styles Location" idea graphic.
Comment 59 mestech 2006-04-10 23:30:57 UTC
As this affects all OS's, I feel that the OS should be changed from "Windows
2000" to "all".  I am working with either Linux or OS-X.
Comment 60 stig2 2006-07-06 12:00:01 UTC
As an editor who has used the WordPerfect reveal codes function since it was
launched I find it very useful and it prevented me moving to any other word
processor. It is only because of a move to Linux that I am now using Open Office
- and I really miss the reveal codes! I receive a lot of manuscripts from
authors and need to be able to see the codes.

But a problem is that many people who have never used WordPerfect have an
incorrect impression of what the function is. It is not like looking inside the
workings of the file and seeing a lot of source code or similar. Instead we see
tags, such as an italics tag or bold tag. OOo people keep saying to use Stylist
but that does not do the job. We are not talking here about styles but about
viewing tags showing the presence of formatting - they might also show the
presence of styles but they must reveal all formatting. It's more like looking
at an HTML file but in a user-friendly way.

Having the WP type of reveal codes in OOo would help bring in a lot of
professional word processor users who hate MS Word and love WordPerfect!
Comment 61 norbert2 2006-12-16 21:51:53 UTC
Why has an issue with so much votes no target set?
Comment 62 mestech 2006-12-22 16:45:29 UTC
I see this as a battle between those that find Styles to be the best and those
that find Reveal Codes better.

I find that Styles are nice and I do use them now that I am learning but I also
find there are times that Reveal Codes would be a life saver.

I believe that the inclusion of both would be a draw to those organizations that
are WP based to OOo.  Moving from Reveal Codes to Styles is no easy task. 
Finding ways of fixing weird formatting problems on imported or merged documents
can be almost impossible without Reveal Codes.  I know many that still use
WordPerfect today in an organization that is almost exclusivly Word.  Some are
even moving to LaTeX over Word due to formatting issues.
Comment 63 erics 2006-12-22 21:35:34 UTC
I completely disagree with it being a battle between Styles and Reveal codes. 
It's not that at all.  Using either one of them enhances the use of the other. 
I always use them both simultaneously.

Styles are extremely useful in their rightful place, but a Reveal Codes feature
can also always useful.  In other words, Styles are not the right solution just
to bold a single word; but I do use Reveal Codes to verify that the Bold On/Off
codes are in the right place, for example, before a CR/LF or line break.

I use Reveal Codes to help me see the Styles codes as well as any other code. 
Styles are used to group formatting codes together and reuse them for
consistency.  Editing a Style will change the formatting throughout the document
where that Style is applied.  Reveal Codes helps in troubleshooting to make sure
all codes, including Styles, are placed correctly.  These two features
complement one another, but they in no way battle against each other.

Yes, Reveal Codes should be added to OOO!  Give me the control over my own
document and allow me to place the codes where I want them, just as WordPerfect
does.  All it is, is like an HTML-code view of the document, so I can see where
to put the opening and closing tags.  It's THE standard for HTML, so why not in
OOO?  Can you imagine the adoption rate of the app when this feature is added?
Comment 64 irneb 2006-12-27 06:27:04 UTC
I've been watching this topic for some time. What I've noticed is that the WP
proponents haven't mentioned that WP has styles functionality (at least
comparable to Word) - that is until erics mentioned that the Styles & RC are
complimentary rather than opponents. I was using styles extensively since the
mid 90's, but can't imagine that I would like to not use RC as well. OOo
pleasantly surprised me by including a more controllable & comprehensive styles
function, but I still miss the reveal codes - here's the reasons:

1. Doing a copy & paste between documents (or even within the same document) you
could easily select the text and miss an (or more) opening and / or closing
format tag(s). When you now paste at a new position - this could cause format
corruption. Try finding the "offending" (or rather half-done) code becomes a
pain - especially if you've copied a large amount of text & graphics.

2. As mentioned in a previous post - you could remove the formatting & then
re-do. Unfortunately this is a total waste of time, as the formatting could take
much more out of your busy day than finding the offending tag & deleting /
editing it. I.e. instead of removing all formatting & redoing - just repair the
error - usually one or two tags, whereas redoing could become hundreds of user
operations.

3. Has anyone ever tried adding text after a formatting end (say after a bold
word)? With RC you can position the cursor to exactly where you want so that the
bold is continued or not as per your desire - not the program's.

4. Creating page-breaks could cause formatting past the next page ... this I've
found happens very often when using styles. Say you've got a Heading3 style on
the first line of the next page. Whether the style itself places a page-break or
you do it manually - OOo nearly always makes the last line on the current page
also Heading3, and it's very difficult to remove. If you don't remove this
Formatting you will then always end up with a large blank line at the end of the
page - usually not a problem, but when you want to even out your pages this
causes hassles. With WP's RC I could place the page-break exactly before the
Heading3 tag & all this would be sorted.

5. The biggest pro for RC to me, was the RC inside the style editor - as here
you could place the formatting codes for that style in the correct order - as
per the page-break in the previous point. In OOo you don't have that type of
control.
Comment 65 irneb 2007-01-09 15:01:28 UTC
Just come accross another problem in this regard. I've got a Heading2 as the
first  "paragraph" (or line) of a page. Included in this heading is an image
(anchored to paragraph & right justified).

Now I want to insert a new page just before the current one. So I move the
cursor to the very begining of the paragraph & press CTRL-ENTER ... oh-no the
image stays on the previous page - it doesn't move with the text.

Ok ... ok I know I had to tell it to "follow text" in the image properties
dialog. But with WP I could position the cursor just before the image tag in the
RC box & press CTRL-ENTER, even if the image was not set to "move with
paragraph". If I've just moved the cursor to the start of the paragraph the same
behaviour would have occured.

I.e. the RC gives a quick & easy way of overriding the default image anchor
operation. If you want to move the image just this once in OOo, you'll have to
check the "Follow text flow" box first then modify your text & then change it
back - or you'll have to move the image seperately.
Comment 66 irneb 2007-01-09 15:02:25 UTC
Just come accross another problem in this regard. I've got a Heading2 as the
first  "paragraph" (or line) of a page. Included in this heading is an image
(anchored to paragraph & right justified).

Now I want to insert a new page just before the current one. So I move the
cursor to the very begining of the paragraph & press CTRL-ENTER ... oh-no the
image stays on the previous page - it doesn't move with the text.

Ok ... ok I know I had to tell it to "follow text" in the image properties
dialog. But with WP I could position the cursor just before the image tag in the
RC box & press CTRL-ENTER, even if the image was not set to "move with
paragraph". If I've just moved the cursor to the start of the paragraph the same
behaviour would have occured.

I.e. the RC gives a quick & easy way of overriding the default image anchor
operation. If you want to move the image just this once in OOo, you'll have to
check the "Follow text flow" box first then modify your text & then change it
back - or you'll have to move the image seperately.
Comment 67 crxssi 2007-01-31 01:07:54 UTC
Codes were the best thing ever, and it is what made WordPerfect one of the best
word processors of all time.  I still use it when possible, and it reminds me of
the limitations of OpenOffice Writer.  Codes allow the user much more power and
contol over documents.  They prevent "mysterious" documents- you can tell
exactly what is happening.  Even trying to determine which styles are in effect
on something can be a challenge.

This issue was opened almost five years ago.... and still marked as "OOLater". 
Isn't it time to consider that now is later?  OpenOffice is great, but it can
always be better!
Comment 68 irneb 2007-01-31 05:18:01 UTC
I agree wholeheartedly. If OOo is simply a replacement for MS Office, then fine
you're just about there - you've got most of MS functionality and then some. But
if you realy want to be top of the Office packages, then you'll have to look at
others as well - MS never was the best and they're still a long way behind most
(especially WP).
Even since the DOS days (when Borland was still making WP 1980's) the reveal
codes feature was there, as was styles, table generation, macros, autocorrect,
gramatik check, phrase & paragraph libraries, built-in metafile / graphics
editor, etc. etc. MS at present still falls short on some of these concepts
which is more than 20 years old - e.g. its Graphics editor is a joke
(fortunately OOo has a true graphics editor in addition to the MS like "objects").
Comment 69 michael.ruess 2007-02-08 11:49:47 UTC
*** Issue 74332 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 70 norbert2 2007-02-10 10:52:38 UTC
Even MS Word is here ahaead of writer! Word shows hard formattings next to the
style name. Have a look at the atatched screenshot "Word_2003.png": "Standard +
8 pt"
Comment 71 norbert2 2007-02-10 10:52:56 UTC
Even MS Word is here ahead of writer! Word shows hard formattings next to the
style name. Have a look at the atatched screenshot "Word_2003.png": "Standard +
8 pt"
Comment 72 norbert2 2007-02-10 10:53:41 UTC
Created attachment 42897 [details]
Word_2003.png
Comment 73 norbert2 2007-02-10 10:56:58 UTC
But implementing a real reveal code feature like WP has is the better solution
than Word.
Comment 74 irneb 2007-02-12 05:08:56 UTC
Yes, the Word "Standard + 8pt" in the font drop-down shows you what's cooking,
OOo does this as well - just using 3 drop downs (Style, Font & Fontsize). The
only difference is it doesn't show how the current formatting differs from the
style, as Word does (everything after the plus is an override).

This is done expertly with WP-RC as you can see where the standard style begins
& ends, and all formatting overrides to any portion of text and / or graphics in
between those tags, i.e. the 8pt overrides begin & end tags. So you can see if
your 8pt override goes to the next line or the next space or the next word or
hafway into the next word (etc etc). If you want to start / stop the override
somewhere else - you click & drag.

With Word / Writer you have to play around with selcting the text properly, and
even then the formatting doesn't always do what you expect. For example you will
not be able to see where a graphic has been inserted - so deleting some text may
also (unexpectedly) delete the graphic.
Comment 75 mestech 2007-02-12 18:42:45 UTC
Imeb, you point out the key reason for "reveal codes."  Know exactly where to
insert the cursor for editing and formatting.  Not a big issue if you create
your own documents from start to finish, but a real pain when having to edit
multiple source documents created on different computers and combined into one
document.

Even the indication of where the style changes would be better than anything
available now.  As you state, it is easy to delete a graphic just because you
are deleting some text that happened to include the insertion point for the graphic.
Comment 76 Regina Henschel 2007-09-04 20:14:50 UTC
*** Issue 81267 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 77 foxcole 2007-09-14 18:27:17 UTC
Because styles are the backbone of OOo and because manual formatting can seem to
break them all to easily, it's very important to be able to see the formatting
that's in use, especially when the work comes from someone else.
Comment 78 mestech 2007-09-19 20:28:01 UTC
Well, it has been over two years since I made my first post to this thread.

I have learned more about styles and I still feel that Reveal Codes is
necessary.  I still have documents where the styles are mangled or others have
not used styles or other general formatting tools but direct formatting.  What a
pain to edit and try to duplicate the formatting over the whole document.



Comment 79 irneb 2007-09-20 09:57:29 UTC
That's the whole point - using Styles makes it much simpler to ensure consistent
formatting, but it doesn't make it easier to format an inconsistent document. If
you've got parts of the doc from others, you may find that they've not used
styles or created their own styles. Thus at present the most effective way would
be to remove all formatting in the inconsistent portions & redo the formatting
from scratch (preferably using styles), maybe using the Paste Special
(Ctrl+Shift+V) --> Unformatted text and then format as needed.

The problem comes in with the "portion" as pasting something into an existing
document does not always place the "wrong" formats in the exact position. This
is where RC can help.

One of the previous posts, said that it's very difficult to implement this as
OOo formats each character instead of having opening & closing tags for each
format element - uhhh WRONG - you're using an XML based file format, XML works
much the same way as HTML: which uses opening & closing tags to show:
  "bold starts here"some text"bold ends here" further text
saved as
  <b>some text</b> further text
It does not save as:
  <b>s<b>o<b>m<b>e<b> <b>t<b>e<b>x<b>t further text

This is exactly the same way that WP RC works - it just shows those open and
close tags as graphical buttons so you can click on them to open a relevant
formatting dialog, drag them to a new place & delete them if not wanted.

When it comes to styles, in OOo's ODF (XML based file) each style is saved
similar to HTML's cascading style sheets (CSS) at the beginning of the file.
Then any portion of the document using this style has again an open & close tag
to show where the style is applied to.
Comment 80 bertram 2007-10-28 04:47:36 UTC
I'm very sad to see that this feature is not receiving the attention that it
deserves.

There is a HUGE falacy of composition in the threads/arguments above.  The
argument runs something like this -- because styles are styles, therefore all
understanding of the code that frames the layout and changes the format is useless.

Styles are styles.  They are a great convenience, but they have NOTHING
WHATSOEVER to do with the justification of Reveal Codes as a valuable feature. 
Neither one can act as a substitute for, or reason for the extermination of, the
other.  They are unrelated featers.  (The efficiency and long-lasting impacts of
the Madison Avenue brainwashing job that MS underwrote for competition purposes,
to trick people into believing that because theiz have "da Styles" dherefores
theiz dussunt need "da Codes," when the two features are totally unrelated,
still amazes me.)

A coder writing php and html gets to see his code (doh!).  Why does he need to
see his code -- he is writing for one of the most forgiving of display-delivery
devices, the monitor.  An author using Writer is preparing to send a high
precision document to a high precision printer, which is by comparison several
orders of magnitude less forgiving than a monitor.

Imagine an author using a TeX editor (TeX uses styles!) but his TeX editor
refuses to allow him to see the codes which control the layout of his or her
document.  Two authors, one using MS Word and the other using a TeX variant, are
sending their documents to similar printers, and both should have equal access
to the layout structure for their documents.  One cannot proofread a precise
document and rely on "styles" and a WYTYSINWYG monitor.  Having sexy styles, or
not having sexy styles, will not change that.  **Nor will Reveal Codes -- until
the inevitalbe problems show up.  When there are problems with a PRECISION
document (not a Post-It note) at the printing phase, Reveal Codes is the only
feature that will help cure the problem.  That's part of the learning curve, and
that when the author realizes that having access to Reveal Codes helps him or
her keep the problems out of the code in the first place, so my sentense at **
above was an intentional lie.  Reveal Codes flattens the learning curve and that
increases the precision and control.

IMHO, Writer should be not be marketed as, or known as, a "Post-It Note"
scribbler like MS Word. (And that is just exactly what Word is, with its 10,000
styles and its totally blindfolded authors.)  Marketing staff for OpenOffice
should "shape" the ooWriter produce so that it develops a reputation as a
**precision document** program -- a program that offers the author precise qand
full control over placement of all format changes and layout changes.  Thus,
when an author needs more control than offered by a "Styles-and-Blindfolds"
product like MS Word, but doesn't want the learning curve and hassles of TeX,
then in the marketplace, then the first product that springs into their minds
should be ooWriter.

"ooWriter ... the powers of TeX, without the hassles ..."  (Of course, everyone
realizes that power, without control, is just plain dangerous, wasteful and stupid.)

That will require that programmers understand that Styles and Reveal Codes are
completely unrelated features.  (If they are related, they are only in the sense
that each feature augments the powers of the other feature.)  And yes, TeX uses
styles.  But, just because TeX has styles, it's programmers understood MS-BS was
not sufficient reason to then hide the code.

OpenOffice Writer ... the powers of TeX without the hassles ...
Comment 81 ejones 2007-10-28 11:05:21 UTC
I'm 100% in agreement with bertram.  This issue is the main reason that I have
reverted to Word Perfect.  WP always has had control of the document right down
to individual characters.  No problem in formating just the way you want, when
you want.
Comment 82 mestech 2007-10-30 16:53:00 UTC
Bertram,

Well put.  I wish I could have explained it that way.

I doubt that it will make any difference to the mind set.

I would just like a way to know how a certain change occurs within a document
and to know which style is the cause.  Or is it direct formatting that is done
outside the style.
Comment 83 soeiro 2007-11-03 23:29:01 UTC
Hello All

The reveal codes function should not only reveal the formating codes, but allow
the user select them, change them and copy and paste them.

Of course I'm not sure about the difficulties involved in implementing this
feature, but it would make OOO Writer a much better word processing software
than it is now.

I see that there is some discussion about styles making the reveal codes feature
not needed. Also, there are some arguments that "direct coding" of formating
codes could make room for "bad uses" of formating codes. However, for the former
argument, it is easy to see that if one does not like to see the formating
codes, he or she can continue to work without them. The second argument is not
very sound either. What is the best way of correcting a messed up HTML page? It
is getting to see the html code!

What this post is about, anyway, is about not only having the ability to see the
formating codes, but to alter them! Copy & paste too. You can copy a complicated
style and then click on parts of it to edit (by the way of menus) or to delete
or add or whatever...

Thanks for just reading this suggestion.

Regards,

Luis f. Soeiro
Comment 84 mestech 2007-11-05 21:37:08 UTC
soeiro I partially agree with you but any way of showing the points that
formatting, either by styles or by direct encoding would be great.

Since my last comment, I have have been reading with great interest about the
Open Document Foundation and their dropping support for ODF.  One of the
comments that I read is about the filters used between documents.  If a Style or
Format isn't understood by the filter, it can just be dropped.  This makes sense
from my experience.

Now if the filter decides that it is going to drop some formatting from that
imported document, some of the formatting that was inside the document could be
left hanging.

Now I agree that formatting should be available in OOo reveal codes, I have
grown to like styles for 95% of what I create.  Revealing the coding point would
be a great improvement, especially when importing documents from some other
editor.  I look at revealing the code as being a great compromise.  Now to add
in the editing abilities will create it's own headaches.  

The biggest issue on this is the different domains of those that prefer reveal
codes and those that prefer styles.  From my experience with WordPerfect is that
it does have a version of styles in it.  Now I think and will repeat that adding
Reveal Codes to OOo would make it much better than Word for most home users.

Styles takes some time to learn.  Most home users want and use a word processing
program for those one-time documents and will never need or use have the tools
of styles.  Shouldn't these peoples needs be addressed?

My wife who writes a lot prefers reveal codes.  Is smart and has read the Styles
guides, still wants Reveal Codes.  What she writes today will be formatted
differently than what she writes tomorrow.

I like styles because I can quickly format or reformat a document that I have
created.  This is where styles rule.  I hate styles when I have to import a
document that has formatting that I do not know anything about.  Now I have to
find every location that the formatting has occurred.  Removing all formatting
and then using styles is not an option.

Someday I hope that this will go beyond this discussion.
Comment 85 irneb 2007-11-06 05:24:00 UTC
"different domains of those that prefer reveal codes and those that prefer
styles" That's simply because those (from the different domains) don't
understand that the 2 things are separate & complimentary. If you've used WP's
styles you'd see that they even implement the RC inside the styles editor.

This I've used to make those table of contents (etc.) work properly, as you
sometimes find (in WP) that the bold or font size gets brought with the heading.
With the styles editor's RC you can place the TOC Open marker just after the
formatting & the TOC Close marker just after the text - so only the text gets
copied to the TOC. True, OOo doesn't need this particular scenario as it never
copies the formating to the TOC & the TOC gets formatted separately. But,
wouldn't it be great if you could make a thing work EXACTLY the way you intend,
instead of this hit-and-mis approach?

"What she writes today will be formatted differently than what she writes
tomorrow" Yes and with Styles it would be a simple change to reformat an
existing document. RC would not make you work more efficiently if you are
reformatting from scratch, except that it would show you where there are
erroneous formatting. Where RC REALLY helps is when you've got several docs
combined or starting from a corruptly formatted document.

"Styles takes some time to learn.  Most home users want and use a word
processing program for those one-time documents and will never need or use have
the tools of styles.  Shouldn't these peoples needs be addressed?" Uhhmmmm ...
if they don't use styles because it's just a once off thing, I think they're not
really power-users and thus wouldn't even know of RC.

"Removing all formatting and then using styles is not an option." I agree, it is
simply a waste of time. Unfortunately this is the only method of getting rid of
"nearly" all formatting errors in OOo. If you combine the use of Styles & RC in
WP you see that this type of thing becomes a breeze in comparison. If you only
use one or the other (Style or RC) you're not making it that much easier for
yourself.

"The reveal codes function should not only reveal the formating codes, but allow
the user select them, change them and copy and paste them." Yes! In total
agreement there. Having just a code viewer is probably better than what's
available know, but it would be like aiming for the outside ring on the target
instead of trying for a bull's eye.
Comment 86 ksevern 2007-11-07 20:18:08 UTC
If you want MS Word to continue to rule the world, don't implement this feature.
Then ooWriter can stay the "pretty much like MS Word free alternative." If you
want to cut into MS market share, add reveal codes.
Comment 87 irneb 2007-11-08 04:48:12 UTC
Yep, exactly. As I've said before: "If you simply want to replace Word, then
you're pretty much there." With this feature you'd probably also gain customer
base from the WordPerfect market, smaller but much more demanding - these are
usually the guys writing moderate to large documents - not those just looking
for a Post-It note writer, or typing one letter every 3 months.

If this feature is implemented decently you may even "steal" some of the TeX
clientèle. Then if you can get incorporation between Writer, Draw AND RC you may
even find that the less demanding PageMaker (or similar) users would start to
adopt OOo instead. Yes, well maybe they'd rather go to Scribus.

All that said, the 1st step would be to at least reveal the codes. This would
make it better than Word (at least in my opinion). Thereafter start implementing
something like "Revise" Codes - thus making that code viewer interactive like WP
does. You may even find (or invent) something better, but I'd advise starting
from WP's RC as a benchmark to aim for.

I've come across something that works similarly in a Draw alternative: Inkscape
which uses SVG files, allows every single object (line, text, curve, etc.) to be
selected and it's SVG code can be opened in a text editor for tweaking. Now
given, your user then needs to know how to work with SVG (or in Writer's case
XML - similar but different) this might be a step forward. I.e. extract the
portion surrounding the current cursor position from the XML file(s). All you
then have to do is implement a more user friendly interface.
Comment 88 irneb 2007-11-08 05:20:02 UTC
Created attachment 49513 [details]
Example of WP's RC
Comment 89 thepriz 2007-11-08 06:45:10 UTC
It would be nice if you haven't voted for this issue to vote for it. It was in
the top ten issues voted on in 2003 we have now dropped down to the 23rd. Which
is not bad considering all the issues that are out there but keeping it in the
top ten would help give it some priority. It says that it has been started but I
haven't seen much in the way of it being worked (as far as communication from
the devs in comments in this area). I really hope it makes it into OO someday
and is on par with Word Perfect.
Comment 90 ejones 2007-11-08 11:02:29 UTC
I'm a home user of Word Perfect & have been since WP first came out, many years
ago.  I once also used M$ OFFICE.  It is no longer on my computer.  Since
version 1.x of OO I've used that for files given to me from M$.  I do not use
the writer.
Why?  Because each and every one of my documents including letters is not the
same, except for the letter head.  I want control down to the individual
character as I get in WP and that includes being able to see the 'reveal code'
function.
So - I stay with WP for my own work and OO for looking at other's works in M$.
And Yes, I have voted for this issue quite a while back.
Comment 91 norbert2 2007-11-11 19:42:19 UTC
Sun seems to give other features that address the average word user more
priority since this may be a bigger market for StarOffice than advanced users ...
Comment 92 mestech 2008-05-01 21:45:36 UTC
Today I was talking to a WordPerfect user that won't use OOo without a reveal
codes like feature.  

Again the issue of styles and how they work is not the way that WordPerfect
users want to work.

This conversation started due to major problems with Windows and his thought of
moving to Linux.

I at least convinced him to load OOo onto his computer and try it for all the
other features.
Comment 93 macias 2008-05-04 08:20:08 UTC
I wonder why "reveal codes" rings only "formatting" bell.

Reveal codes is not only about formatting/attributes -- it is about fast 
(_fast_) way of editing for power-users (please change the component to 
editing).

Let's say you inserted ten formulas like this (latex syntax): 
 A_i = a_{ij} 
"of course" with OOW in main document you see formulas (the visual effect, not 
the code). Now, please, replace (fast) all "i" indices to "k". In OOW it is an 
ordeal. 
 
So I don't think it is something with low priority, it is very important 
feature -- otherwise you narrow down your user base to weekend users and 1-2 
pages documents. 
  With bigger document I had to give up with OOW -- I'll cry using latex but I 
have no other choice -- it is the only way I can make global changes to 
anything: formulas, attributes, you name it. In OOW I have to click on 
thousands of objects, patiently select property, change it -- this is not task 
for humans...
Comment 94 thepriz 2008-09-13 06:14:57 UTC
As of today the issue is back up in the top 13. It has been started for a long
time. I am just wondering what the status of this issue is? It has been over 6
years since this has been submitted and has been one of the most voted on issues
of OpenOffice. I just hope it is being worked on and the reason it is taking so
long is that they are doing it right. (Works like WordPerfect).
Comment 95 mestech 2008-09-15 16:37:58 UTC
I think this will sit on the "OOo Later" list for a long time.  Many of the
developers over the years have always stated "Learn Styles."  While I have
learned styles and found them useful, they are not the same as Reveal Codes and
not as powerful for editing documents that are not created with styles or imported.

As more people around work here are using LaTex for the same reasons macias
states, it is important to know the customer base.  There is a large base that
need the find editing control that styles doesn't provide.  The control that
sometimes is more associated with a desktop publishing program.

On documents that I create, styles are great.  On documents that I don't create,
many have no styles and the formatting is not my option to change to styles.
Comment 96 jmcruz 2008-09-15 16:48:57 UTC
I agree with mestech. José
Comment 97 irneb 2008-09-15 17:35:51 UTC
"Many of the developers over the years have always stated 'Learn Styles.'"
Yet again, they simply DON'T UNDERSTAND what RC is all about. This statement is
similar in saying: "There shouldn't be a table object in Writer, since you can
copy a Calc spreadsheet into it."

I've used WP a lot in the past, and always this keeps bugging me when using OOo.
I'm using Styles ad infinitum, but I'm still missing RC. RC didn't replace
Styles for me in WP either - I used both in all documents in WP. (See the
example I've posted last year). The 2 are NOT Either Or - they complement each
other. I'm still finding that WP's old Styles were easier (and more efficient)
to use and / or modify than OOW's - simply because of RC.

And yes, that thing about search & replace elements in formulas also makes RC so
much more than OOw could ever achieve without it. You can even S&R format codes
in a document: e.g. to change a individually formatted doc into a Style
formatted doc you could use S&R to change say <font
size=18><bold>*</bold></font> into <style name=Heading1>*</style> in one step,
which would catch nearly all the instances, then you only have to look for those
headings not formatted consistently.

To developers saying use "Styles instead", I'd metaphor this statement thus:
Create a program using only a text editor without tabs / line returns. You can't
have a syntax highlighting, auto formatting & auto-complete editor because you
should only copy-n-paste from existing code. Why do you want to see your code in
a logical structured way? The compiler doesn't notice the difference, why should
you? For that matter, why even have a 3rd gen language, you could have done the
same using Assembly, or even straight bit code. Don't ask us to make your life
simpler, use what we gave you and stop complaining.
Comment 98 fortran_iv 2009-01-22 05:47:52 UTC
I've read through nearly seven years of comments on this issue, and I don't
understand the continued resistance to a Reveal Codes feature.  Apparently many
of the opponents to this feature: A) do not understand how the WP RC window
functioned, and B) don't often have to deal with legacy documents.

A) The WP Reveal Codes window was not a "license to kill codes."  WP
used--encouraged--styles just as OOo Writer does, although they weren't as
sophisticated.

You could, for instance, create a "quoted passage" style that inset the margins
and changed the font, then apply it to whole sections of a document.  In the RC
window, there would appear a single tag for [Style On:Quoted] and another for
[Style Off:Quoted].  You could not tweak the formatting within the style; you
could only delete the [Style On] or [Style Off] tag (which automatically deleted
the mated tag as well).

If you wanted to override the style formatting in any way, you had to insert
additional formatting--just as you do in Writer.  (Yes, you could nest styles.)
 And if you deleted the [Style] tags, any other formatting tags remained in
place, and remained in effect.

RC did not replace styles and RC did not conflict with styles.  In fact, RC made
styles _easier _to _use_ for less technical people, because RC enabled you to
see exactly what styles were applied, exactly where they started and ended, and
exactly how they overlapped and interacted (or conflicted).

B) I have a 200,000 word document in WP5.1 format.  It has about 1200
occurrences of what Writer calls "character formatting".  I would _like_ to
convert it to something a bit more modern.

When I convert it into Writer, neither of two things happens:  The base font of
the original is _not_ applied to the Default style in Writer, and the Default
style in Writer is _not_ applied to the converted text.  Instead, an invisible
internal style is applied individually to every paragraph.  (At least, that's
the best I can figure out--I'm not experienced with XML.)  The base font--the
root formatting setting of the whole document!--is converted incorrectly.  And I
can't find a sensible way to fix it.

Opponents to Reveal Codes would apparently have me believe the sensible thing to
do is apply Default Formatting to the whole document, then manually reapply 1200
"character styles".  If I'm understanding the XML code, it appears that all I
really need to do is modify--or destroy--one hidden text style to fix my font
problem.  But the style in question doesn't seem to appear in the F11 Styles
window, and I can't figure out how to modify it otherwise.

A Reveal Codes window would (hopefully) offer me an approach to cleaning up such
massive conversion problems without all of the manual reformatting required at
present.  Or, for the more sophisticated user, would make it easier to write a
macro to automate the necessary corrections.

-----
I quit using MS Word altogether because of its secrecy about formatting.  All my
documentation at work (dozens of documents) is now done in manually-coded HTML
with external CSS stylesheets--because I find it easier to maintain!  So far,
I've not seen anything to recommend OOo Writer over MS Word except the price. 
The continued resistance to Reveal Codes implies that the developers don't want
Writer to be anything more than a Word clone.  Frankly, that's just not good
enough for me.
Comment 99 irneb 2009-01-22 06:55:32 UTC
Hear! Hear! Until Writer has a decent RC-like feature (not simply an add-on to
display codes) it's (just like Word) a dinky-toy word processor. Just barely
enough to write those office memos, but don't try doing anything serious like
writing a product manual - you'll be wasting your time.

I've also started writing most of these things in HTML. I've been using NVU for
that since you can swap easily between WYSIWYG and Source editing (exactly as
you'd expect from RC), and have a built in CSS editor. And BTW if you're doing
HTML hard coding, XML shouldn't be that steep a learning curve ... they're
basically the same structure, XML's just got some extras and more strict
(similar to XHTML).
Comment 100 jmcruz 2009-01-22 10:04:49 UTC
I fully agree with fortran_iv: I also do not understand such resistance to 
this old request (dream?) of seeing (and hopefully editing) in a better way 
the formatting styles applied to existing documents.
The technical "explanation" that someone has put forward some years ago 
("there are no "codes" to reveal) is pure semantics, just like when Clinton 
said in TV that he "did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky").
This is a sad issue that, as a long time user of Star/OpenOffice, I regret. It 
would be features such as this that could give OOO another advantage over 
MSOffice...
Will it be so hard to program?... Sorry for not giving my help, but I am not a 
professional or proficient programmer.
José
Comment 101 cnighswonger 2009-01-22 15:44:08 UTC
Here is a poll I created to see just how many would like to see this feature
added to OO Writer.

http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/530473-134015

Feel free to pass the link around. I bet there are more than 149 people who
would like to see this feature added.
Comment 102 mestech 2009-01-23 20:55:41 UTC
Fortran_iv, well  said.

I use styles and they are great.  But there are times that I would love to know
what is going wrong with a document that is using styles but isn't working as it
should.  I don't want to delete all the styles that I have just spent time
setting to fix an issue where there is a style change that I cannot seem to
select or change.

I spent a fair bit of time doing this the other night.  I had a style change
that seemed to be be related to space or some invisible character.  I ended up
removing all styles and starting from scratch.  I could have saved myself lots
of time with Reveal Codes.

As I said ages ago, just add it and then OOo will have the best of both worlds.
Comment 103 jarl 2009-04-23 08:20:30 UTC
I am an former WP5.1 user.

I understand the discussion and the arguements both for and against this feature (moderne text
processing applications are not stream-oriented as was WP5.1), and I suggest that we step back a
little bit and realise that the reason this feature was so popular in WP5.1 was not that it made it
possible to format without using styles (AFAIR this was called formatting macros in WP5.1). The
real reason that this feature was so damn popular in WP5.1 was that it was an easy way to debug
your formatting (whether through use of styles or not). It could give you an answer to the
question

"Why is this text formated this particular way?"

Now modern text-processing applications are not stream-oriented as was wp5.1, so "reveal
codes" may not really be a good solutions, because there really is no codes in between the
characters. There are attributes on characters in stead. Anyway, as ama mentions there really
seems to be a general request to show/debug formatting and/or show character attributes in an
intuitive way.

I suggest, as an alternative to "reveal codes", to reveal this formatting/layout information in a
window similar to firebug. Firebug is an extension to firefox, and you can basically click on any
content on a html page, and it will tell you the resulting (CSS) formating style, and how this
resulting formatting style has been computed through rule of inheritance from parent style
classes, etc. Firebug is an excelent tool to format your (X)HTML pages the way you want with or
without style. I would like to see similar feature in OOo. If such a feature was there. I would guess
that there will only be few WP5.1 die-hards left that would still insist on "reveal codes".

I will attach a screenshot of firebug to illustrate my point.
Comment 104 jarl 2009-04-23 08:28:17 UTC
Created attachment 61748 [details]
Firebug screenshot, reveals formatting of "50 million downloads!"
Comment 105 macias 2009-04-23 08:42:16 UTC
> I understand the discussion and the arguements both for and against
> this feature 
...
> I suggest, as an alternative to "reveal codes", to reveal this
> formatting/layout information 

I doubt in first -- otherwise please tell us how your proposition help edit all 
formulas at once? 

With reveal codes it is straightforward, but somehow I don't see what 
formatting has to do with fractions, sigmas, sums, etc.

> I would guess
> that there will only be few WP5.1 die-hards left that would still
> insist on "reveal codes".

I am not WP user and reveal codes is not "because we are used to it". Reveal 
codes is simply useful no matter where do you come from -- why? Read the 
comments above.

Testcase: document with 100 formulas inserted. Replace all Sigma symbols with 
Theta symbol. Time limit: 5 seconds. 

Comment 106 mestech 2009-04-24 18:48:38 UTC
Firebug may be useful for CSS but from the image I can quickly see massive
confusion occurring when trying to edit a document.  In the suggestion that I
presented in 2006 (3 years ago this month), the formatting is indicated within
the text of the document.  It also provides a description of the nesting.

http://www.openoffice.org/nonav/issues/showattachment.cgi/35624/View_Codes.png

I have come across so many issues with auto-formatting (styles included) to want
to throw the word processor out.  There are times I want to know why I get a new
blank page in a document when I have deleted all text and still have space at
the bottom of the page.  Some style but unknown to me where and which one.

Styles don't always clear themselves if you delete the text within the style and
this can create a surprise formatting issue.

It is easy to come up with reasons and examples to prove one or the other
argument but if there is a problem that is caused by styles or the wrong usage
of styles or some strange conflict, how do you find and fix these?

As I have stated so many times.  Lets not clone MS Office, lets be better and
offer tools that are better.  OOo tries to replace MS Office but why not also
try to replace WP as well?  I know people that purchase WP with each new version
because they don't like the way that MS Office takes control of their documents.
 There are also people that use LaTeX instead of MS Office.

This was opened in 2002, I made my first comment in 2005 and four years later,
we are still requesting Reveal Codes.
Comment 107 dkerber 2009-04-24 18:57:02 UTC
Maybe if we changed the wording of the request from "reveal codes" to "reveal
styles" it might get more attention from the devs?  It doesn't happen all the
time, but often enough to be an issue, where my styles get scrambled or too
deeply nested, and I can't figure what's causing my text to appear the way it
is.  Showing where styles start and end, and what is set in each one would be an
enormous help.
Comment 108 macias 2009-04-24 19:16:33 UTC
> Maybe if we changed the wording of the
> request from "reveal codes" to "reveal styles" it might get more
> attention from the devs?  

Or maybe if we implement the feature we could get even more attention? After 
all, OpenOffice is FLOSS, so everybody can help. 



Please stop sending those "reminders" -- developers are busy people, reporters 
are busy people, if you have to just complain reports are aging, please start a 
your own blog -- this is BTS, it is for technical issues _only_.

Thank you for understanding and respecting other people's time.
Comment 109 cnighswonger 2009-04-24 22:40:56 UTC
>this is BTS, it is for technical issues _only_.

Posts like this are not only non-constructive, but are truly the thing that
"waste other people's time." IE. The time it took me to reply and delete the
email from my inbox. This is clearly the forum in which to discuss/debate this
enhancement.
Comment 110 kslays 2009-04-26 15:51:34 UTC
I am a strong supporter of this feature. As I child, I learned to write on the computer with Word Perfect.  
I remember when I discovered the feature how thrilled I was.  I also remember when I had to switch to 
MS Word how inferior I thought it was, due to this feature loss.  To this day, every time Word or Writer 
has some strange error, I lament the loss of that feature.  I was NOT a technical user, but found this 
feature extremely useful.  Beyond that, as a child, I felt like it allowed me to learn more about how 
computers (or at least word processors) work.

I do not see the programming problem here for a simple implementation.  The system could mirror web 
browsers "reveal HTML," but with a "save" feature.  We can create a new VERY SIMPLE format-free text 
editor window with the raw XML.  The user can hit a "save" button in that window, which will update the 
Writer window.  Or, if that is a problem, Writer could close the document when editing XML, then 
essentially be able to toggle between them.  Not ideal, but certainly much better than unzipping, 
opening in notepad, etc.  An ideal implementation would co-ordinate the two windows with editing 
possible in both.

The reason this issue has so many votes is because people understand its utility.  This is the reason so 
many law offices still use Word Perfect.  And to the above discussion of styles, that is a bit of a 
digression because I would like to see where in the text styles are implemented.  The "revert to default" 
can be useful, but certainly not as good.  Please give this issue the attention it deserves.
Comment 111 mestech 2009-04-27 18:22:30 UTC
dkerber, styles are already revealed.  The tools to show styles are on the tool
bar or the styles box.  In this case, terminology is important.  The base XML
code needs to be displayed to show that there are formatting (not styles) changes.

A manually entered bold or underline is not a style, it is a formatting code. 
It is outside the styles but can be overridden by styles which can make it easy
or harder to find problems.

Maybe it should be "reveal XML" instead of reveal codes.

I will be facing an issue with codes as I will be editing a document that has
been written and modified over years between different versions of Office,
OpenOffice and Word Perfect.  It needs to be re-written and I will be trying to
use styles throughout the document.  But I need to keep the formatting close to
the original (a standard) and incorporate the New company standards.  It is on
documents like this that I really wish there was a native reveal codes for OOo.
Comment 112 jarl 2009-04-29 12:01:17 UTC
Dear mestech.

I completely agree with your comment. My comment with firebug was thought as an inspiration
to alternatives to WP reveal codes feature, as I don't think OOo should be either MS office clone,
nor WP clone.

I can see from your idea graphic that you have had thoughts similar to the features I like about
firebug.

Personally I have moved from WP to LaTeX (and maybe one day I will move to OOo). Not being
able to debug styles and formatting is definitely a show-stopper for me.

Jarl
Comment 113 jmcruz 2009-04-29 13:23:55 UTC
This is just to remind all that the name of this (still) open issue is "Reveal 
formatting codes". Not just "reveal codes" or "reveal styles"!
And those codes can really exist amongst the text characters (and be XML-like 
or in other format) or just be fictitious (being part of object's attributes, 
not stream-lined in the text character flow) but, nevertheless, have "real" 
effects. Whatever the case is (it seems to be the second one), what is asked 
from the developers is a way to see where, in the text, they are effective 
(i.e. have formatting consequences).

Comment 114 irneb 2009-04-29 17:09:35 UTC
Created attachment 61891 [details]
Example of element / formatting tags for XML
Comment 115 irneb 2009-04-29 17:34:08 UTC
I've attached a screenshot of the oXygen XML editor's method to show element
tags. This looks so similar to WP's RC as to be the same, although oXygen
formats it using tabs, which IMHO is even better since you can see the various
parts easier.

However I did a test with the OOo xml based file. I whote the following in a
blank ODT: This is a test for formatting. Bolded from start to just after "for",
underlined from "test" till end. Opening the CONTENTS.XML file inside the ODT
zip archive. The way it's saved makes the RC a bit complicated:

<text:p>
  <text:span text:style-name="T1">This is a</text:span> 
  <text:span text:style-name="T3">test for</text:span> 
  <text:span text:style-name="T2">formatting.</text:span> 
</text:p>

Now each of these "temporary" styles, that should rather be automatically
created styles, have the full set of formatting to each:

<style:style style:name="T1" style:family="text">
  <style:text-properties fo:font-weight="bold" style:font-weight-asian="bold"
style:font-weight-complex="bold" /> 
</style:style>
<style:style style:name="T2" style:family="text">
  <style:text-properties style:text-underline-style="solid"
style:text-underline-width="auto" style:text-underline-color="font-color" /> 
</style:style>
<style:style style:name="T3" style:family="text">
  <style:text-properties style:text-underline-style="solid"
style:text-underline-width="auto" style:text-underline-color="font-color"
fo:font-weight="bold" style:font-weight-asian="bold"
style:font-weight-complex="bold" /> 
</style:style>

To have RC working the content should have been saved as such:
<text:p><text:span text:style-name="T1">This is a <text:span
text:style-name="T2">test for</text:span> formatting.</text:span>

However, this would not work properly, since the 1st closing marker </text:span>
would close the T2 style (underlining). This is not as intended.

So I'm rather then suggesting some visual XML editing to be incorporated into
Writer.
Comment 116 cabrinkley 2009-08-13 01:23:59 UTC
I have read through years of discussion about the addition of a Reveal Codes
capability to OOo Writer and I have to agree wholeheartedly with fortran_iv (Jan
22, 2009). I am at a loss to understand why so many contributors propose
workarounds and other options rather than a full on commitment to make OOo more
than just a MS Word lookalike. For several years, I've tried to use MS Word (and
OOo), but the limitation of not having RC is prohibitive--I have to create
documents in WP then save them to MS Word format to be compatible with my
colleagues--I find this still preferable to using OOo or MS Word directly, even
with the compatibility issues.  My husband is a professor who has to use MS Word
due to department regs, but inevitably, I have to convert his documents with WP,
fix the accumulated formatting errors (very easy with RC and the "Match Codes"
and "Find and Replace" features), then convert back to MS Word. I was so hoping
that after finally being able to read WP documents, OOo Writer would have the RC
feature and we could dispense with both MS Word and WP.  I'm disappointed that
it seems unlikely to happen (IMHO, visual XML is definitely NOT the answer).
Comment 117 irneb 2009-08-13 06:33:11 UTC
I also love the RC feature in WP. I'm just saying that now that I've actually
looked at the thing myself, I can see no way of implementing it with the current
ODF file format. Either they have to change the file format (which is not going
to happen), or they implement another form of RC instead of simply cloning WP's
version. My suggestion is something in the form of Oxygen XML Editor's visual tags.
Comment 118 mestech 2009-08-17 20:55:22 UTC
Irneb,

I agree with your statement.  It would be the only way to get around the
differences in the technology.  As I suggested on 2009 April 27, that maybe this
should be changed to "reveal XML" instead of Reveal Code.  To indicate that the
feature will display the underlying XML of the document.

The "Reveal Codes" macro by Ian Laurenson's worked pretty good when I first
tried it so many years ago.  It looked pretty much like WP's Reveal Codes.


Even a simple way of displaying when all the different formatting changes are
occurring is a step in the right direction.  Like showing non-printing
characters as an example.

We still have people that are using WP because of this feature.

I feel that this is more important than a Ribbon Interface that I read about on
my holidays.
Comment 119 mestech 2009-09-23 16:39:37 UTC
After reading on the OOo users mail list about another attack on the use of
Reveal Codes, I thought of an idea that may help some of the problems.

If there was a macro or tool that could automatically convert all the individual
codes that are not styles into various styles and then add them to the documents
style list.  The macro would have to decide what category the style fit into but
it would help.

This could go along with the idea of having a "View" option to show where styles
are started and stopped.
Comment 120 macias 2009-09-23 17:20:09 UTC
Is this macro a reveal codes feature? No -- then please open another report.

( And just before you do, do the math -- somebody has to sit down and design 
such feature, somebody has to write it down, somebody has to spend time on 
this. Thanks to that macro and time spent, do we get reveal codes sooner or 
later? So thanks for not reporting anything ).
Comment 121 mestech 2009-09-28 18:35:39 UTC
It is a reveal codes type of feature.

Reading through this thread has provided a realization that "Reveal Codes" as
per the full request is never going to happen due to the "Only Styles" group the
feels the whole world runs better when you use Styles and only Styles.  :)

To me, Reveal Codes basis in a tool to find and possibly edit the coding
involved in a document.  One of the main reasons I want Reveal Codes it so find
those stupid little formatting issues that occur between different editors on a
document when styles (MS and WP versions as well) have not been used.

Jannz Reveal Code Macro is a step in the right direction.  The idea of a Macro
of was to provide a path from the need to Reveal Codes to a method of supporting
the Styles only group.

I still feel that if the View Non-Printing Characters could be modified to show
the various formatting points, it would help a lot.

And, this is a discussion on how to implement Reveal Codes.

When I logged in today, I thought about how someone my just decide that this is
based on an old OS and decide that it should be closed to get rid of it.
Comment 122 ejones 2009-09-28 20:07:38 UTC
And that's why I continue to use Word Perfect as my primary word processing
program.  I am not in the publishing business, nor do I write novels.  Each page
I create has a different style, maybe not a great difference, but somewhere in
the page will be something out of the ordinary.

If I am to switch to OO, there must a way to be completely creative and that
definitely means there must be a way to display and edit formatting codes.
Comment 123 irneb 2009-09-29 08:34:47 UTC
It seems possible to at least have a display of what formatting is used, but
editing these would not work as WP's RC does. The difference between WP & OOo is
that WP uses a form of nested and / or overlapping format codes, while OOo
enforces absolutely no nesting and / or overlapping. Each bit of text could only
have one single formatting style applied to it. The "bit" may range from a
single character, to a paragraph, to the entire document - as long as the format
stays consistent to the previous style's format the style is not closed.

OOo uses only a sub-set of what I thought it did originally: instead of the
formatting codes it only uses CSS-like styles (Cascading Style Sheets), but
without the C part (cascading) - so that should probably read SS styles (Style
Sheet). Whenever a hard-format change is done to anything, an entirely new
auto-style is created. The previous style is stopped and a new style tag is
started. The new style incorporates all the formatting codes of the previous
style with the exception of the change. This sounds (to me at least) a bit
wasted as a simple change to bold would duplicate every other format assignment
(font, underline, font size, capitalization, italics, etc.) which is still as
previous. However, I can see that it's much more efficient (program speed wise)
than WP's nested / overlapping method: see below.

WP (on the other hand) has no such thing as auto-generated-styles. It uses open
and close tags for each format change. E.g. a bold start & end, an underline
start & end, etc. It does have a style start & end tag as well, but this is
considered similar to any other format tag pair. This method uses the least
amount of space to actually save the formatting, seeing as any one single change
is saved as only that change - the formatting which is not changed still
continues and is not stopped & duplicated as with OOo. Programming speed wise
this could have a detrimental effect though, seeing as displaying any piece of
text all the previous text needs to be examined to find out what format is still
applicable. With OOo only the latest style start tag needs to be found to
display any one piece of text.

The reason I can't see OOo using RC directly as WP does is this: OOo has no way
of knowing to which style start tag a style stop tag refers. Thus it "assumes"
it always refers to the latest style start. This does not create a problem in
OOo due to the rule that only one style can be applied at any one time. WP's
stop tags are always paired to a start tag (be that a style or other formatting
code), thus the stop tag would stop its corresponding style / format and not
become confused with something else (like OOo would).

@mestech: It would certainly be possible to convert these "temporary" styles to
full styles to be displayed in the stylist. It may be a bit difficult to group
them into Paragraph, Character, Page, etc. ... but then again maybe not. It
doesn't exactly serve the purpose of reveal codes though (only very partly).

The real problem I can see with this is an entirely new style is created each
time any one thing is changed. I've also not checked if duplicate formatting
creates duplicate styles or if the existing (similar) auto style is re-used.
This may create hundreds (if not thousands) of styles in the stylist.

If you do need the hard-format to be saved as a Style in Stylist, this feature
is already implemented (at least in 3.1, probably earlier). If you have the
stylist open, select the hard-formatted text. Then click on the "New Style from
Selection" button (top-right of stylist panel). Give the new style a name. The
group would be the same as the currently displayed style group page (i.e.
Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page / List). True this is not automatic, as you
suggested for the macro, but at least it's not going to create hundreds of
styles which are (nearly) the same to each other.
Comment 124 irneb 2009-09-29 08:54:10 UTC
@mestech (again) :)
Maybe that's a step in the right direction: have at least a visual indication of
where these Auto-Generated-Styles start / stop. This way some of the RC
functionality is possible as the user could at least discover where changes
occur, and thus it would make searching for errors a bit easier.

Then it would be nice to have something (say in the pop-up menu) to revert to
previous format at a start of a newly generated auto-style. This way the user
can see: "Oh! Here's where the error happened. Change it to what was previous."

And then (what would really be nice) is to have a display list of the previous,
current & next auto-style's formatting codes. Preferably highlighting the
differences. And then allowing the user to "join them" by removing / adding
differences.
Comment 125 irneb 2009-09-29 08:55:26 UTC
@mestech (again) :)
Maybe that's a step in the right direction: have at least a visual indication of
where these Auto-Generated-Styles start / stop. This way some of the RC
functionality is possible as the user could at least discover where changes
occur, and thus it would make searching for errors a bit easier.

Then it would be nice to have something (say in the pop-up menu) to revert to
previous format at a start of a newly generated auto-style. This way the user
can see: "Oh! Here's where the error happened. Change it to what was previous."

And then (what would really be nice) is to have a display list of the previous,
current & next auto-style's formatting codes. Preferably highlighting the
differences. And then allowing the user to "join them" by removing / adding
differences.

In the long run this may even become more usable than RC for fault finding. Then
there simply needs to be some way of doing Search & Replace for formatting as well.
Comment 126 erandall 2009-12-22 21:30:35 UTC
I started with WP 5.1, then years later moved briefly to WP10, then quickly to
X3.  I've been using RC most recently to create templates for things like a
recipe template for a 3-ring 8.5 by 11- inch binder (X3 just implemented a
usable one) from pre-existing template for a 3 x 5 card.  When things don't work
exactly as I intend, I can address it point-by-point until it is right.

Yes, this is a bit of hybrid-ing my word processor with desk-top publishing
features, but that is the level of production-control I prefer.  Control that is
no longer available on non-Windows systems.

The numerous comments that OpenOffice products should be more than clones of the
commercially-available resonates with me.  I would like to think that the
contributors and developers of this project would feel the same.

--And WordPerfect could definately use color matching for its matched format
tags.  A place where we could be better at RC than the RC Masters.--
Comment 127 macias 2010-02-14 12:43:45 UTC
There are usually some voices against RC feature stating that user should use 
styles, and modify them, and not tweak this or that attribute. Great, but in 
real world I don't create documents all the time, very often I download 
document from the web site (.doc "of course") and I only have to fill the 
blanks. 

There is also another reason to have RC -- to see why OOO display document the 
way it displays, e.g. this huge gap below line in the document I edit right 
now, is because of:
a) the style of the paragraph
b) attribute of this paragraph
c) table cell settings
d) or it is just a bug in OOO, because yesterday there was no gap?

Without RC I cannot be sure, so I have to check all the possible settings to 
get the clue -- it is waste of time.
Comment 128 fbax 2010-02-14 15:54:06 UTC
I think the case for reveal codes was incorrectly stated from the beginning.
Reveal codes should present all formatting codes (both styles and direct
formatting).  This will make styles even easier to use; since reveal codes will
also display to user where styles start/end.  At the moment, users must move
through document one character at a time to see where styles change.

If the argument against reveal codes is that users should use styles and not
directly format content; then the functionality to format content without using
styles should be removed from OOo.  Simply force users to only use styles.  As
long as users are allowed format content outside of styles; a need for reveal
codes exists.

Someone should change "OS: Win200" to "OS: All".
Comment 129 erics 2010-02-15 02:42:14 UTC
OK, I'm apologizing up front because this will be harsh and I don't have the 
time to reread 8 years of duplicated posts to get the details that are buried 
deep inside:

Well, if they strip the functionality to directly format content and force us to 
use Styles to format anything, then they'll be forcing a lot of people to leave 
OO.o -- because open source people don't like to be forced into anything.  I'm 
one of them.  They'll go find another app with more openness.

As I'm aware of the open source arena, that's how open source apps become so 
popular: they cater to their users and implement highly requested features, of 
which I'd guess RC is one of the most requested.

So forgive me now for being harsh and asking without reading the last 8 years of 
posts again, but why is this such a big headache and why all the years and years 
and years of fighting it when it's so requested?  What in the world do your 
users have to do to get a feature implemented?  The first bug on this was logged 
8 years ago!  What does it take?  Yes, I know there is an ODF format issue 
(which wasn't even implemented when the first bug was logged), but what's the 
problem?  Why is it so prohibitive?  Why can't styles overlap and nest?  And for 
crying out loud, why do they have to be Styles?  (In my book, and for millions 
of others around the world, a Style is defined as a group of formatting codes, 
and a tag is a single formatting code.) Why can't they just be simple tags, like 
[Bold On][Bold Off] and [Underline On][Underline Off]?  Millions of people all 
over the world understand that logic.

Check out any HTML editor and you will see they ALL are basically RC editors 
showing beginning and ending tags allowing them to overlap and nest codes/tags, 
with or without the document preview.  Double click on a tag in the better 
editors, like Dreamweaver, and it pops up the corresponding dialog for you to 
edit it; hmmm, just like WP!  Do people consider that a copy of WP?  Who cares 
if they do?  Really.  All  HTML editors show the tags, and OO.o will format in 
HTML, so why all the bru-ha-ha?  Just show those codes to start out with and 
build from there.  Show the XML codes and go from there.

I'm getting tired of the fight.  I've been following this since the beginning.  
What hasn't been said that will convince the developers it's a good idea to get 
as close to WP's implementation as possible?  It's all been said 400 times 
already!

And frankly, what's wrong with adding highly requested features that are already 
implemented in commercially available apps?  Of course OO.o might, in time, 
offer more than the commercial apps, but who cares if features are copied?  If 
it works and people want it, put it in.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Just make the 
wheel more durable and more functional!  Beat them at their own game.

But at this rate, nothing will get implemented and we're still where we were 8 
years ago when the first RC bug was logged.  Now that's open source progress!
Comment 130 wbruhin 2010-02-15 16:46:14 UTC
This is still the one thing which makes us (my wife and myself) go back to
WordPerfect again and again.

Styles is not the solution, if anything it makes it worse - at least that is how
I felt about styles in Word and for that reason never switched to Word.

We are just working on a document which are forcing ourselves to do in OOO as we
like to get rid of WP on our machines.  Something which would have taken maybe
10 minutes took is an hour or more.

I wish I could help implementing something like this but that is way over my head.

It looks to me that this will never happen in OOO, so maybe it is time to
re-evaluate things (look for alternatives or fork out the money to Corel for an
update of WP).

Such a pity!

Werner
Comment 131 bob3 2010-02-15 22:05:30 UTC
The inability to "reveal codes" is why Open Office has not been adopted in our
offices; the head paper shuffler is "old school" & sticks with what she wants,
and so goes the rest of the office.
I'm running Linux, as do most of us, so we're stuck with using WP running in a
virtual machine, which isn't so bad.
The Boss here won't make any donations to the Open Office project though because
he considers it "unusable" as is.
Comment 132 irneb 2010-02-16 04:57:04 UTC
If you need WP on Linux, you could try Wine -
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=222

Not all the versions seem to work though, but at least you don't need a 2nd OS
in a VM just to run one program.

Alternatively (if you don't mind using an older version), there's still a "free"
native Linux version of WP8 available:
http://tldp.org/FAQ/WordPerfect-Linux-FAQ/downloadwp8.html
Comment 133 jctbvk 2010-02-16 10:31:59 UTC
Maybe the following 2 links can give a better explanation for those who have
never experienced this feature:

Getting the most out of Reveal [formatting] Codes in WordPerfect:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1153321168468
"In summary…
The Reveal Codes feature gives you unprecedented control over a document's
formatting, layout, and structure. Clearly, Reveal Codes are the most powerful
tool you have when it comes to troubleshooting a document."

The Reveal [formatting] Codes feature in Corel WordPerfect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect
"The Reveal Codes feature is a second editing screen that can be toggled 
open and closed at the bottom of the main editing screen. 
Text is displayed in Reveal Codes interspersed with tags and the 
occasional objects, with the tags and objects represented by named tokens. 
The scheme makes it far easier to untangle coding messes than with 
styles-based word processors, and object tokens can be clicked with a 
pointing device to directly open the configuration editor for the particular 
object type, e.g. clicking on a style token brings up the style editor 
with the particular style type displayed. 
WordPerfect users forced to change word processors by employers frequently 
complain on WordPerfect online forums that they are lost without Reveal Codes."
Comment 134 jctbvk 2010-02-16 10:33:00 UTC
Maybe the following 2 links can give a better explanation for those who have
never experienced this feature:

Getting the most out of Reveal [formatting] Codes in WordPerfect:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1153321168468
"In summary…
The Reveal Codes feature gives you unprecedented control over a document's
formatting, layout, and structure. Clearly, Reveal Codes are the most powerful
tool you have when it comes to troubleshooting a document."

The Reveal [formatting] Codes feature in Corel WordPerfect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect
"The Reveal Codes feature is a second editing screen that can be toggled 
open and closed at the bottom of the main editing screen. 
Text is displayed in Reveal Codes interspersed with tags and the 
occasional objects, with the tags and objects represented by named tokens. 
The scheme makes it far easier to untangle coding messes than with 
styles-based word processors, and object tokens can be clicked with a 
pointing device to directly open the configuration editor for the particular 
object type, e.g. clicking on a style token brings up the style editor 
with the particular style type displayed. 
WordPerfect users forced to change word processors by employers frequently 
complain on WordPerfect online forums that they are lost without Reveal Codes."
Comment 135 mestech 2010-02-16 16:27:57 UTC
- Thank you for the links jctbvk.  These are informative links to this subject.

fbax, the idea of showing all has been discussed many times.  I feel that those
that push styles as the only way don't understand how many of us work.  We don't
all create documents that use common styles.  In a business setting, I can see
it some times.  In many cases, you get a document that others have worked on
that are not following any style have been direct edited.  Their comment is to
delete all formatting and start again with styles.  Not an option when you are
only changing a paragraph from a 30 page document.  We don't all have the
authority to make the changes.

Remove direct formatting.  What a thought.  Nice way to push many away from OOo
but I guess it really is no different than being told to use styles or no
formatting.

- erics, nice comparison to an HTML editor.  I think I looked at that a few
years ago.  XML formatting is like that.  Open and close tags.  Heck, the RC was
like that from my old WP days.

The issue is the divide between those that work on random documents that will be
formatted in a unique way.  A document that is created for a one time use.  A
document that would require making it's own unique style that may never be used
again.  For these one-of documents, direct coding is easier and a time saver. 
Or those that work with people that use their own formatting between different
applications.

And those that work in an environment where every document is formatted almost
the same.  Formatted to some set standard where it is easy to use styles to meet
this requirement.

This divide won't be resolved unless we all cave and use only one application in
the world.  MS would like that as it would most likely be their product.

---------
I am working on a document now that will be edited by others.  They are using
WordPerfect, various versions of Word and OOo.  I ensure that during the whole
phase, there will be a lot of manual formatting implemented.  This is going to
be a headache if there are any strange issues between the other applications and
OOo.  I have run into them before and in a couple of cases,  iannz RC macro has
saved my butt.  I will have to try it again with this document.

Also something I have come across a couple of situations where I create a
document that I have not used any manual settings or styles that I have a
problem with.  I would like an easy way to know where the problem is.  I don't
have the time to uncompress the saved file and look at the XML code to figure
this out.  I would like to see the point where I have a problem.  A way to get
my cursor into the right point to enter a CR or something else.

Comment 136 ksevern 2010-02-18 16:52:37 UTC
The fact that people keep pleading for this feature when about everything that
can be said about it has already been said, should tell the OO folks something.
So I figure the following:

1. They can't do it.

OO may be designed in such a way that they would have to totally redesign the
product to implement the feature. However, for someone who is familiar with WP
Reveal Codes, that is not too high a price.

2. They don't want to beat MS Word.

MS Word has always been lame. It's harder to use and can't do as much as
WordPerfect. The only way they could beat WordPerfect was to bundle the their
products together and sell them below cost. Their cash cow Windoze allowed them
to do that. Now, OO can return the favor, because it literally is free. OO will
likely never be 100% compatible with MS Office, because MS will keep tweaking
the format. So to win the market they have to be better. Reveal Codes is a key
step in getting there. That argument has already been made several times over.
So all I can conclude is that they don't want to beat MS Word.

So what do we who need Reveal Codes do?

1. We keep using old copies of WordPerfect, which is still better than either MS
Word or OO Writer. (I still use WP 5.1 macro-based systems to generate documents
because it still works, and I can't duplicate it elsewhere.)

2. If we can't do that, then we use whichever of the equally lame twins (MS Word
or OO Writer) we must to get the job done.

3. Maximize your votes (2) for this issue. Hopefully, if it keeps bubbling to
the top, it will make it a pain for the OO folks to ignore it.
Comment 137 macias 2010-02-18 19:25:24 UTC
> So I figure the following:

3. Elegance by obscurity -- RC would reveal to anyone, not even a developer, 
how OOW manages the attributes. It would be interesting to see the internals 
of some crazy effects I see when using OOW. 
Take this hypothesis with a smile ;-)

> So what do we who need Reveal Codes do?

4. Collect the money and "hire" a programmer for that. I would pay for this 
but I would have a guarantee it would not end with taking money and no 
product, or even with code (good quality) but rejected by OOO team (Not 
Invented Here Syndrome).

I have to buy MS Office anyway (yes, I know, no RC, but OO is not very good in 
importing .doc files as you probably know), so few bucks more won't kill me (I 
think). However I have no idea how to setup such hiring.

Comment 138 bob3 2010-02-18 19:35:29 UTC
"4. Collect the money and "hire" a programmer for that. I would pay for this..."

We have never had a problem "donating" to open source projects, that option is
acceptable, though it would have to be "after the fact" in order to assure the
donation is properly applied.
Comment 139 macias 2010-02-18 19:54:41 UTC
I am not talking about charity -- I am talking about buying this feature. 

Why this way? Because _I_ am tired of not taking responsibility, of abandoning 
created software, of ignoring those who paid, of not listening (8 years!). 
Charity is OK if you want support homeless, poor, etc. But making software is 
a profession, so if my money will go for a software, then only for a 
professional programmer, who takes his/her job seriously.

> We have never had a problem "donating" to open source projects

I can only speak for myself, but I had and I have one and fundamental. I have 
no problem for paying for good quality product, with solid prospects of 
reliable development (because I need a tool for a job, not toy for my 
amusement). "Closed" or "open" (source) does not imply the above (it is 
orthogonal to the quality).
Comment 140 fbax 2010-02-18 21:55:11 UTC
> "4. Collect the money and "hire" a programmer for that. I would pay for this..."

I'm with macias; setup some kind of trust to collect funds; paid to OOo project
when code is released in production version.  I'd pay!  Who is "Assigned to
ama"?  How much cash is required to get ama to start coding?

What to do if funds never reach funding threshold to initiate coding or project
is still ignored?  Alternate non-profit?
Comment 141 irneb 2010-02-19 04:55:05 UTC
Created attachment 67905 [details]
Explanation of RC Alternative
Comment 142 irneb 2010-02-19 04:57:05 UTC
I think this is not going to happen exactly as per WP's RC. Therefore I'm
starting to "design" an alternative which could work for OOo. See the attached
file - (Explanation of RC Alternative).

I'd like to see comments about this as I want to run it by the UX team as well.
Maybe I should start a Wiki Page there?
Comment 143 ejones 2010-02-19 11:01:47 UTC
Thank you irneb for your explanation of the differences between WP and OO.  I'm
a home user of OO and have used WP from DOS versions to X4 (14).  And the main
reason for using WP is because I have complete control over formatting.  I don't
need styles as other than a heading on a letter my documents are mostly
different from one another.  Formatting on the fly - not restricted.   So,
although I do use OO as a substitute for M$ office (when others send me M$
Office files), I do most of my writing with WP.  But I do use OO for
spreadsheets and data bases.
Comment 144 wbruhin 2010-02-19 11:24:33 UTC
Irneb,

Very good explanation!

Totally agree that OO can't totally duplicate the WP RC feature, as the
formatting is done differently in WP (won't go into this here as it not pertinent).

What I expect from an "OO RC" feature is to show in a window/frame all the
details about the formatting of the document, which I think you have shown very
well in your alternative document.  Only thing I would like to suggest is not to
use special characters for things like Line-Return, Tab, and Page Break.  I
think they should be special "buttons" (in your terminology), e.g. something
like "HRt" and "HPg" "Left Tab", "Right Tab" "HD Back tag" or similar as done in WP.

There also needs to be special handling for things like images and other
embedded objects.

With regards to the temporary styles, there should probably be some way of
converting into a permanent style.

Werner

P.S.
We are only two users, but this would be something I would be willing to help
funding in the order of 50€ or so.
Comment 145 mestech 2010-02-19 21:23:29 UTC
Interesting comments.  I agree with irneb as many of his comments go along with
what I have said over the years.  Some of your suggestions work closely to what
I suggested back in 2006.  We think alike.  :)

--

Now I am working on my document that has been edited on Word and WordPerfect.  I
was instructed to remove all formatting and start from scratch.  This sounded
like a great idea.

I thought I would follow the suggestions that keep getting told to use RC fans
on how to remove formatting.  What a good test.  Now, I selected the whole
document.  I went to "Format > Default Formatting" thinking that all formatting
would be removed.  I was wrong.  I still have some sections within the document
that I cannot find how they are assigned.  I keep getting a status indication
for these sections.

On the screen I get lines where these sections start/end.  I have checked
everything and all formatting is listed as default.

It is something that can be copied as I have tried to select all text and copy
it but the formatting stayed with the text.

I have spent over an hour trying to get this out of the document.  Reveal codes
would have resolved this in a few seconds.  It is the only formatting left.

I will start looking at this again on Monday.  Grumble Grumble.
Comment 146 opoman 2010-12-20 13:30:17 UTC
Word and OO are unhelpful to writers who wish to self publish.  Format is hugely
important and styles are too constraining.  Without reveal codes, it can take
hours to get to the root of why something is not formatting correctly. 
WordPerfect is a joy to use in this respect but it does not install
satisfactorily on Linux.  Adding a reveal codes facility to OO would make a huge
difference to its appeal to self publishing writers.  After that, deal with the
problem of providing sufficiently flexible arrangements for A5 booklet setting
up and printing which is another thing WordPerfect does beautifully.
Comment 147 bob3 2010-12-20 19:46:54 UTC
Happily, WP runs just fine in even a simple virtual machine; we're using the
now-discontinued Win4Lin in the office but at home the folks at VirtualBox have
been kind enough to allow it's use on personal computers free of charge.

If OO ever gets around to implementing the reveal codes feature we'll probably
go back to using it, but for now the absence of the feature is a deal breaker.
Comment 148 erics 2010-12-20 22:13:03 UTC
I'm with you Bob3!  Mar 7, 2002 (the first RC bug entered) is a long time ago
and too long to beg for a single feature.  I have joyfully returned to
WordPerfect and upgraded to v.15 without a single regret.  WordPerfect is (and
always has been) BY FAR the best product out there, bar none.

What's more, WordPerfect developers don't require me to convince them that the
sky really is blue and grass really is green.  I'm tired of depending on the
OpenOffice.org product managers and developers who are really taking their
marching orders from the behemoth in Redmond, so it seems.  Else, why the big
fight against their supporters?  Open your ears people!

As it will soon be said, "OpenOffice who?  Is that really still around?  Whoever
uses that anymore?"  That phrase stinks of Novell and many other brands that
could have made a deeper mark on society had they pulled their heads out of the
sand and listened to their customer base and MADE things work the way their user
base wants and needs it to work.  Anything is possible if you have good enough
developers.

Come to think of it, I almost hope OO.o never does incorporate RC now, because
that way, OO.o will never steal away the masses from the WordPerfect customer
base.  Hence, WordPerfect will still have the user base, including me, to
continue developing their software and beating the pulp out of their
competition.  A few bucks for a far-superior product works for me, rather than
no bucks for a continuous headache.

Good luck.  OO.o will use its bucks for aspirin instead, unless they start
listening.
Comment 149 w3bnr 2010-12-20 22:59:54 UTC
As I commented on March 23, 2006, I'm still using Word Perfect 12 for
correspondence.  Using DataBase and SpreadSheets from OO, but until a WP type
interface is forthcoming - I'm staying with WP.
Comment 150 Rich Steinberg 2011-10-24 14:48:24 UTC
I've been told to look at this as an alternative to wordperfect.  I won't use OO unless and until a change is made here.
Comment 151 T. J. Frazier 2012-02-19 22:30:04 UTC
*** Issue 23487 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 152 dlfiner 2012-04-15 14:03:55 UTC
As a potential new user of OO, I checked for the reveal codes feature, which I use extensively in WordPerfect.  I use it for more than repairing global formatting; I frequently import text from elsewhere that has nested italics, subscripts, font sizes, bolding, etc., and I need to know the scope of those features.  I don't want to simply have everything revert to plan text ... I want to preserve some features and get rid of others.  Also when I'm writing, I use these various formatting codes as well.  Styles are completely irrelevant to what I use RC for.   I'd happily convert if RC were part of OO.  As it is, OO won't be considered further.
Comment 153 dlfiner 2012-04-15 14:04:22 UTC
As a potential new user of OO, I checked for the reveal codes feature, which I use extensively in WordPerfect.  I use it for more than repairing global formatting; I frequently import text from elsewhere that has nested italics, subscripts, font sizes, bolding, etc., and I need to know the scope of those features.  I don't want to simply have everything revert to plan text ... I want to preserve some features and get rid of others.  Also when I'm writing, I use these various formatting codes as well.  Styles are completely irrelevant to what I use RC for.   I'd happily convert if RC were part of OO.  As it is, OO won't be considered further.
Comment 154 orcmid 2012-04-15 16:17:35 UTC
It is amazing to me that this request has been here for 10 years and there is no movement.  

 a. Some folks won't use OpenOffice until an equivalent of the Reveal Codes function of WordPerfect is provided.  
 b. Occassionally, folks who understand how OpenOffice is tied to the OpenDocument Format attempt to explain that OpenOffice.org doesn't use "codes" in the manner of the historical WordPerfect format.  Its nothing so simple.

Stepping back, it is the case that troubleshooting a document might be assisted if there were something comparable to WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" but appropriate to the use of ODF by OpenOffice-lineage software.  I've seen nasty situations where formatting mysteries show up around fonts and styles, for example, and it is very difficult to figure out where a conflict seems to be occuring.  (One might be able to figure it out by inspecting the XML of the ODF document, but that is not something expected of even power users of the software.)

And, of course, we are talking here about providing such an extensive feature absolutely for free, if one could find someone motivated to build it solely for the satisfaction of it.

I have a couple of examples that might at least clarify how different the situations are.  I wonder how many more years this request will still be here!
Comment 155 orcmid 2012-04-15 17:12:56 UTC
The 2010-02-19 "Explanation of RC Alternative" attachment does explain the situation quite well.  It misses the case that ODF <text:span> elements can be nested and that one must somehow deal with inheritance happening in styles.

What one needs to know is the style-defined features applicable at any point in the text and, if necessary, where is a particular one of those features (e.g., the applicable font) determined.

The comparable situation with [X]HTML is not just the element structure but the application of CSS styles along with addition of CSS-style feature inheritance rules.

Even so, I wonder whether availability and use of Iannz RevealCode macro would not work well enough (comment 55 at https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3395#c55).  Apparently work on that macro was abandoned in 2007 and it would likely have to be redone for OO.o 3.3 and later.
Comment 156 orcmid 2012-04-15 17:25:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #155)
> Even so, I wonder whether availability and use of Iannz RevealCode macro would
> not work well enough (comment 55 at
> https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3395#c55).  Apparently work on
> that macro was abandoned in 2007 and it would likely have to be redone for OO.o
> 3.3 and later.

Here is where Iannz OpenOffice.org work is found: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/
The macro is under LGPL.

It appears that there is no version of the RevealCodes macro since 2004.
Comment 157 irneb 2012-04-17 07:22:47 UTC
(In reply to comment #155)
> The 2010-02-19 "Explanation of RC Alternative" attachment does explain the
> situation quite well.  It misses the case that ODF <text:span> elements can be
> nested and that one must somehow deal with inheritance happening in styles.
> 
Could you please indicate how to nest these things? Or is it only possible through hacking the XML files? Through my own investigations every change makes a new style (be that a user defined style or an automatic style), but no-where does the ODF implementation allow for nested tags inside the text. If it was possible RC would become a breeze to implement (in comparison to now at least).

Unfortunately we're stuck with a decision made a whole lot of years ago, about how the file structure is supposed to be. This probably happened in the SXW days (or even earlier). And that decision was to not use a streaming format such as WPD and HTML does. For various reasons this wasn't a "bad" idea per say, some performance gains are possible through this decision. Unfortunately it makes a RC like feature a near impossibility though. What I can't understand though is why (if you're not going to use nesting in a streamable format) use XML then ... isn't that one of the most Stream-able Nestable file formats out there? Even more so than HTML?

Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent ... just curious as to why do one thing and then another which seems so like "incompatible inconsistent thinking". It's as if the decisions were made on an ad-hoc basis without reference of prior decisions. Not that I'm saying XML shouldn't have been used, it's just that it seems it was used solely for the reasons that it was a "open" and "widespread" "standard" ... not because it was the best fit for the intended data structure. To the contrary, it's probably the most removed fit for the ODF data structure. And this thread actually proves it.
Comment 158 orcmid 2012-04-17 17:29:38 UTC
(In reply to comment #157)
> (In reply to comment #155)
> > The 2010-02-19 "Explanation of RC Alternative" attachment does explain the
> > situation quite well.  It misses the case that ODF <text:span> elements can be
> > nested and that one must somehow deal with inheritance happening in styles.
> > 
> Could you please indicate how to nest these things? Or is it only possible
> through hacking the XML files? Through my own investigations every change makes
> a new style (be that a user defined style or an automatic style), but no-where
> does the ODF implementation allow for nested tags inside the text. If it was
> possible RC would become a breeze to implement (in comparison to now at least).
[ ... ]
Let us not confuse how the ODF format is defined versus what any given ODF-supporting producer uses of the format.  So long as ODF is properly consumed, it is not necessary for an implementation to produce the same document exactly the same way.  (This has potential usability concerns when the document is being worked on collaboratively, but the ODF specification does not address that, just the format.)

It is too late to argue the choice of XML and many XML-allied standards as a foundation for the OpenDocument Format.  Note that ISO/IEC IS 29500 for OOXML also uses XML and a form of Zip packaging (OPC) as a foundation, although OOXML is more run-oriented than the stricter hierarchical nature of ODF.  It is all done with XML though.

I find it interesting that OpenOffice.org-lineage programs tend to create flat switching among automatically-created anonymous styles within a paragraph or heading, without any tendency to do <text:span> nesting.  That does not mean it is difficult to translate.  OpenOffice.org 3.3 accepts WPD files and produces ODT files in its way of styling.  WordPerfect X5, I see, accepts the ODT file and after conversion manages to place it in its format structure, as can be seen in the Reveal Codes of the ODT->WPD conversion.
Comment 159 orcmid 2012-04-17 17:45:17 UTC
Created attachment 77454 [details]
Example of an OpenOffice ODT document (from a WPD) read back into WP and shown with Reveal Codes

There are other attachments that show what Reveal Codes is like in WordPerfect.  This example is of an OpenOffice ODT document (imported from WPD and saved as ODT) that is opened in WordPerfect X5.  Notice that the conversion to WPD is relatively reliable (there was no justification used in the original WPD or the ODT version made from it).  

Keep in mind that these Reveal Codes are for a document that is now in WPD format, even though it was an OpenOffice ODT document previously converted from a WPD.  (The next attachment looks at the other side of the story.)

(In reply to comment #154)
> I have a couple of examples that might at least clarify how different the
> situations are.  I wonder how many more years this request will still be here!

(In reply to comment #158)
> I find it interesting that OpenOffice.org-lineage programs tend to create flat
> switching among automatically-created anonymous styles within a paragraph or
> heading, without any tendency to do <text:span> nesting.  That does not mean it
> is difficult to translate.  OpenOffice.org 3.3 accepts WPD files and produces
> ODT files in its way of styling.  WordPerfect X5, I see, accepts the ODT file
> and after conversion manages to place it in its format structure, as can be
> seen in the Reveal Codes of the ODT->WPD conversion.
Comment 160 orcmid 2012-04-17 18:07:16 UTC
Created attachment 77455 [details]
Extracts of the ODF document showing how the same text shown in attachment #77454 [details] is formatted in ODF via an OpenOffice-lineage application

I should point out that the exercise for making a roundtrip from WPD to ODT to WPD was done using LibreOffice 3.3.2 as the intermediary.  It formats ODT output in the same way as all OpenOffice.org 3.x implementations do, including the forthcoming Apache OpenOffice 3.4.

There are two parts in the XML specimen.  The first, the <office:text> element provides the text of the single paragraph in the document.  It is this:

<office:text>
    <text:p text:style-name="P2">
        <text:span text:style-name="T4">This little ditty</text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T5"> is simply to see </text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T2">what </text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T1">Reveal Codes</text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T2"> is all </text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T5">about when used in </text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T6">Word</text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T3">Perfect</text:span>
        <text:span text:style-name="T5">. <text:s/>
        </text:span>
    </text:p>
</office:text>

Notice that, although no specific style was selected with this document, a number of automatic styles are applied based on actions taken by the document author (mainly font selections, bolding, italicizing, and changes of font size).

THe different <text:span> elements and their text:style-name attributes appeal to the places where the resulting formatting conditons have been retained.  Note that there is an automatic style for the paragraph itself as well.  

Here is one of the automatic style definitions (all of them are in the attached file).  They are all on this pattern:

    <style:style style:name="T1" style:family="text">
        <style:text-properties fo:color="#000000"
                style:font-name="Courier New" fo:font-size="12pt"
                fo:font-style="italic" fo:font-weight="bold"
                style:font-name-asian="Courier New"
                style:font-size-asian="12pt" style:font-style-asian="italic"
                style:font-weight-asian="bold"
                style:font-name-complex="Courier New"
                style:font-size-complex="12pt"
                style:font-style-complex="italic"
                style:font-weight-complex="bold"/>
    </style:style>

These are not done in a way where only the change from the adjacent span is handled, nor are spans nested in a way that has inner spans only identify changes.  It is of course possible to synthesize such information -- it was done when the ODT was converted back to a WPD.  But it is not how the OpenOffice-lineage engines are designed to reflect certain format changes via introduction of automatic styles that capture them.  

In addition, for someone working natively with OpenDocument format documents, any kind of Reveal Styling (it is not about codes) would need to be more harmonious with how the format works as well as the different ways the format can be controlled by user actions (i.e., using some sort of Reveal Styling to see where to adjust the document in the editor or in the Reveal Styling interface itself).

Having said all of those high-level things, there is also this:  There was in the past a macro that managed to do a reasonable job at providing style information about selected text in OpenOffice.org.  There is information about that in the comments on this issue.  That remains the most-likely-achievable expedient solution and it depends on someone able and willing to recover and continue that work, if not re-invent it.

(In reply to comment #154)
> I have a couple of examples that might at least clarify how different the
> situations are.  I wonder how many more years this request will still be here!

(In reply to comment #158)
> I find it interesting that OpenOffice.org-lineage programs tend to create flat
> switching among automatically-created anonymous styles within a paragraph or
> heading, without any tendency to do <text:span> nesting.  That does not mean it
> is difficult to translate.  OpenOffice.org 3.3 accepts WPD files and produces
> ODT files in its way of styling.  WordPerfect X5, I see, accepts the ODT file
> and after conversion manages to place it in its format structure, as can be
> seen in the Reveal Codes of the ODT->WPD conversion.
Comment 161 T. J. Frazier 2012-04-19 19:39:59 UTC
I miss this feature too, from my WP days. I am working on an extension, but very slowly. See "Status" at <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User:TJFrazier/Reveal_Codes.>
Comment 162 Oliver-Rainer Wittmann 2012-06-13 12:15:52 UTC
getting rid of value "enhancement" for field "severity".
For enhancement the field "issue type" shall be used.
Comment 163 Edwin Sharp 2014-03-11 15:15:55 UTC
*** Issue 14694 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 164 orcmid 2016-02-01 15:51:57 UTC
(In reply to orcmid from comment #160 of 2012-04-17)
[ ... ]
> In addition, for someone working natively with OpenDocument format
> documents, any kind of Reveal Styling (it is not about codes) would need to
> be more harmonious with how the format works as well as the different ways
> the format can be controlled by user actions (i.e., using some sort of
> Reveal Styling to see where to adjust the document in the editor or in the
> Reveal Styling interface itself).
> 
> Having said all of those high-level things, there is also this:  There was
> in the past a macro that managed to do a reasonable job at providing style
> information about selected text in OpenOffice.org.  There is information
> about that in the comments on this issue.  That remains the
> most-likely-achievable expedient solution and it depends on someone able and
> willing to recover and continue that work, if not re-invent it.

There has been no activity on this thread since Oliver-Rainer Wittmann's comment of 2012-06-13, although there was a duplicate Issue 14694 in 2014.

At this time (2016-02-01) here is no prospect of anything being done that provides the desired functionality in the product.  Provision of an extension with some degree of function remains possible but is out-of-scope for the product itself.

I am changing this Issue to Resolved - Won't Fix.

This issue record will remain and the discussion might be useful for anyone who entertains such functionality (in any ODF-oriented product) in the future.  Comments can continue to be made.  Interested parties should be clear that there is no likelihood of changes to the software.