Subject: Re: pruning "redundant" properties while editing
From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Tue Mar 13 2001 - 09:35:47 CST
If we delete redundant properties, especially at edit time, I'd like to
request that we make sure the undo mechansim can undo that deletion. If
unlimited undo of this is unwieldy, I request that we at least allow
such undo for some reasonable period.
On more than one occasion I've done dumb things like accidentally apply
a new style to one or a range of paragraphs by mistake. If redundant
properties are deleted at edit time, there may be no way to undo the
style application and return to the document condition before the
accident. In many cases this is not a significant problem, but if the
paragraph contains individual words in bold or italic, and the
accidental style applied is, for example, bold, the information about
which words were in bold or italic is gone. It can be very frustrating.
BTW: Word 97 does allow you to undo and return to the previous paragraph
with, for example bolded words. (This facility may have limits to it,
today I applied a style including bold, then undid it, the paragraph was
OK. Next I applied the style and did one other edit, undid twice, and
the bold words were restored. I know there are limits to the
capability, because I have screwed myself this way. Perhaps it occurred
more often when I accidentally changed several paragraphs, and did not
notice it until much later. I will experiment a little more, including
seeing what happens after I close and reopen the document.)
OK, I saved the document and closed Word, then reopened it. By
switching from a style with bolding to one without, the paragraph was
restored with the bolded word. So, the redundant properties are quite
persistent.
BTW: This occurred using "normal" saves, not the aggravating "fast save"
option. (I always turn the fast save option off, and I double checked
just now.)
Hope this helps,
Randy Kramer
Paul Rohr wrote:
>
> At 01:30 PM 3/12/01 -0500, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> >http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=247 gives some more insight
> >into this RFE (IMHO, this is not a bug, but still something that should be
> >fixed). I think that somewhere in the PT we aren't recognizing that the
> >properties are the same as the defaults in pp_Property.cpp and thus not
> >ignoring them. Just a thought. I guess that I will look into this sometime
> >soon.
>
> Dom,
>
> Thanks for the pointer. I remembered having the original conversation with
> Jeff, but forgot that he did the Right Thing and filed it in Bugzilla, too.
> (Shame on me for not checking.)
>
> IIRC, neither of us was sure which of the following places this should be
> done:
>
> 1. at export time
> 2. at edit time, in the piece table
> 3. at edit time, in the view
> 4. some mix of 2 and 3
>
> Armed with that bug and this thread, I think you now know everything I ever
> knew about this topic. I hope you're right that #2 will suffice for all the
> screw cases we'll ever run across. If so, that'd be sweet, and not much
> code, either.
>
> Do you want help identifying the desired behavior before tackling the
> underlying mechanism? If so, I suspect that some of the usual folks would
> be happy to oblige.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Mar 13 2001 - 09:37:52 CST