Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 75034
Add optionso that hard attributes could be overwritten by sparagraph styles
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:40:02 UTC
While creating a document, I often realize the need to create a heading at some point in the document. At such time, I simply press ENTER and type a short sentence, and press ENTER at the end of it. then I click on this short sentence and apply a "Heading n" style. At other times, I select an existing short sentence and apply the Heading style. But the problem is, when I apply the Heading, some font attributes are not reset. For example, if the original sentence had an underline, it is retained even after the sentence becomes a Heading. To get a uniform look in my hreadings, I have to first reset all formatting (by selecting the short sentence and pressing CTRL+SHFT+SpaceBar). Desired: Writer should reset the font format to the Heading's style.
I disagree with your proposal. If you have done a direct formatting, then it should neither be removed by a paragraph style nor by a character style. If you have formatted some characters with a character style, then a paragraph style should not remove that settings. And if you have used a paragraph style for formatting - for example to underline the paragraph - then you will have no problems and the heading style will change the appearance as defined in the style.
Yes, of course, you are right. The Heading must not reset the other attributes by default. But I do have a problem that would be fairly common amongst drafters of documents. One thing I forgot to mention is that this document comes out of various other documents. (Our committee members compiled several widely different documents on the same subject; and now I am supposed to consolidate the best points from those documents and make a final document.) So I have copied and pasted various passages from different documents. Unfortunately, we did not start out with a common template/formatting style. As a result, each of the original document has a different font/paragraph style. So the final document looks quite weird. After collecting the best points, I have to edit the passages a lot. That includes creating new headings, merging text under two or more headings, pushing some text (indent/outdent), etc. Firther, some paragraphs carry hard-coded paragraph numbers, which I have to delete manually. Now I want to apply a uniform look to all paragraphs. It's here that I face the issue. Most of the original text is already formatted in its own way; and each paragraph contains at least 5-6 different font/paragraph formats! So when I create a new title by breaking up an existing paragraph, or typing a new one, the title takes up a totally different format. Regularizing this is a nightmare: For example, I have more than 300 "Headings" that have a multitude of fonts, sizes and attributes (bold/underline/italics). I want to bring them all to a common look with a single command. Question is, HOW?
Two possibilities: - paste the text into the new document without formattings (option "unformatted text" in Paste button) - select the text where you want to remove the hard formattings and Ctrl-Shift-Space (as you already mentioned above) That hard formattings are not overruled by styles is a part of Writer's concept and will not be changed. What -in the future- could be implemented is an option where the user would be able to select wether he wants to clear hard formats be applying styles or not.
yes, that's what I am looking for-- An option for the author to overwrite the existing formatting and revert to how the "plain" headings look like. For example, while clicking on the "Heading n" menu item, user can press a modifier key such as CTRL, to trigger this behavior.