Subject: Re: Reveal codes (was Re: Zero-length Runs and show codes)
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 15 2001 - 17:36:26 CST
On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 01:06:40PM -0800, WJCarpenter wrote:
> jesper> So if modern word processors leave the same kind of mess as WP
> jesper> did, I'd argue that we actually do need the option - at least
> jesper> for the control freaks :)
>
> It's obvious to me that modern versions of (at least) MSWord *do*
> leave invisible crap laying around inside the document that is, in
> practice, very difficult to get rid of. I'm sure there are many
> long-time MSWord users who know nothing about the "view all"
> preferences item, and who spend non-trivial amounts of time tweaking
> the physical appearance of runs of text because they don't have a
> clear picture of what MSWord believes to be the structure of the
> document.
As a non-long time MS Word user (thanks, Abi), I can testify that I
have indeed done just that. (In fact, I've learned much more about
Word since I started working on AbiWord than I ever did as a user.)
Also to concur with your other email: reveal codes is useful for
fixing problem caused by formatting instructions that you thought you
got rid of, but really didn't. Or other such cruft that the word
processor thought needed to be there, but you really didn't want.
Sure, it would be great if this never happened in Abi. And I've never
actually needed to look at the source of an Abi document to fix a
problem in the document that I would have used reveal codes for. But
I highly doubt it won't be useful someday.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
GnuPG Key:
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/key
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