How do I create a template that includes NO bullets, numbering,

ChuckL,

do i understand it correctly that you want to create a document with lists like
* first line
* second line
* third etc.
and that you do not want OpenOffice to change these * (for example) in bullets?!?

There are a few ways of doing this:

.1.
create the document in a simple editor like MousePad first, using your preferred "bullets" ; select this text and copy it into the OpenOffice document (works with M$-Word too)

.2.
first -at the beginning of the list- press several times the <Enter>-button,
with <Arrow-Up> go back to the first line of your list
then type the first line, but do NOT give <Enter>, but <Arrow-Down>
now type the second line of your list, etc.
till your list is ready

.3.
just start typing your list, but
everytime OpenOffice (or M$-word) changes the line to the unwanted bullet-type, inmediately press <Esc> and the default-bullet will be removed

.4.
in OpenOffice first type the list WITHOUT any sign in front of the lines, just use a <TAB>
when ready with the list,
select the entire text of the list, and after selecting this text, choose Lay-Out of your Numbering

Hopes you can find a nice way to work within OpenOffice

It appears that I was unclear about what I am trying to do. I wish to
have an unformatted sheet that includes NO AUTOMATIC FORMATTING other
than word-wrapping. I realize that I could use GEDIT, but I do wish to
have features of Open Office Word available should I decide to use them.

I have tried to create a template to do this in OOWord, but the
formatting returns after a few carriage returns.

I used to use "Describe" word processor before IBM forced me off of
OS/2. If it was available for Linux, I should still use it. The only
thing that really came close was Geowrite, but that died even before
Describe.

I guess that what I am trying to do is create a text editor within OOWord.

Thanks for your prompt response.

Chuck Lingo

On 01/14/2011 01:01 PM, Menting wrote:
> Your question #141473 on openoffice.org in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+question/141473
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Menting proposed the following answer:
> ChuckL,
>
> do i understand it correctly that you want to create a document with lists like
> * first line
> * second line
> * third etc.
> and that you do not want OpenOffice to change these * (for example) in bullets?!?
>
> There are a few ways of doing this:
>
> .1.
> create the document in a simple editor like MousePad first, using your preferred "bullets" ; select this text and copy it into the OpenOffice document (works with M$-Word too)
>
> .2.
> first -at the beginning of the list- press several times the<Enter>-button,
> with<Arrow-Up> go back to the first line of your list
> then type the first line, but do NOT give<Enter>, but<Arrow-Down>
> now type the second line of your list, etc.
> till your list is ready
>
> .3.
> just start typing your list, but
> everytime OpenOffice (or M$-word) changes the line to the unwanted bullet-type, inmediately press<Esc> and the default-bullet will be removed
>
> .4.
> in OpenOffice first type the list WITHOUT any sign in front of the lines, just use a<TAB>
> when ready with the list,
> select the entire text of the list, and after selecting this text, choose Lay-Out of your Numbering
>
> Hopes you can find a nice way to work within OpenOffice
>

--
"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily
unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as
in a state of nature." --James Madison, Federalist No. 52, 1788

This is at the minimum a usable workaround. Consider it solved for now. Thanks for all of your help.

Chuck

Perhaps a better solution is available. In order to help figure that out, can you specify what is less than ideal about this one?

If you don't want to completely turn off AutoFormat, you can change what operations are performed by the AutoFormat feature (Format > AutoCorrect > AutoCorrect Options...). However, automatic wrapping of lines occurs in any word processor, regardless of whether or not there is autoformatting, so you don't need AutoFormat enabled for that (and you had indicated that you didn't want any more automatic formatting).

As a separate matter from AutoFormat, you can create a document or template that has whatever font, size, and tab stops you want.

Eliah,

Thank you for your response.

Perhaps a new description of my desires is in order. Way back when
typewriters were the order of the day, the spacing, and line feeds were
up to the typist. I find that I can not enter a carriage return without
getting an unwanted line feed. "Cut and Paste" to Thunderbird results in
additional line feeds resulting in double spacing between paragraphs.

What this really boils down to is that I can NOT turn features "ON" or
"OFF" at my choice. O.O. Writer has icons and drop-down menus that
indicate the ability to turn "features" on or off. Unfortunately, the
standard "Write" template seems to have "ON" imbedded in the template
and even when I turn them "OFF" they return on the next "RETURN" or
"ENTER" key press.

While I generally find Linux, Ubuntu, combined with OOorg. to be very
good, I am missing IBM's OS/2 combined with the Describe word processor
which was more of a publishing application, and Mesa 2 spreadsheet more
and more. True, Netscape crashed regularly, but not too often, and
anyway all that was needed was to kill and restart it. Nothing else was
affected, not even downloads in process.

It is not good, as far as I am concerned, to have to export a document
as a PDF in order to paste it into an email without changing the
formatting.

Linux, Ubuntu, OOorg. office suite, and Mozilla products are good and
useful, but in some cases they make decisions that I believe should be
made by the user. The Icons in Write for Bullets and Numbering should
show if these are "ON" or "OFF". When selected either way they should
not change without input from the user.

Wow!, What a rant. I guess that these problems, as I see them, have been
festering for a long time. An easy solution for the user would be to
allow the user to set and reset, at his choice and at any time, the
default format including features.

I am sure that the programmer who wrote these applications considers
what I am calling problems, features. If I could see what features are
active each time I start the application and change them to my choice
and save this as the default, I should also consider them features. They
are selectable, but they do NOT stay selected, or deselected, as the
case may be.

Perhaps I have been awake for long enough now. As I read what I have
written it appears to boil down to 3 things. 1. On starting the
application, the list of features, and their setting, is not displayed.
2. Even though the features are changeable, the changes are not made
permanent (e.g. the selection does not automatically become the default,
and can not be set as the default) 3. I hate stealth resets to the
programmers' choice. This is what I call the reappearance of a feature
that I have supposedly turned OFF.

As my last programming was a dedicated data base application written in
Commodore Basic for a VIC-20. I am not qualified to try this for any
current applications, even with the source code available.

Thanks for this chance, or should I say push, to rethink more thoroughly
my problem and what I really desire to have. I think that is is properly
sumarized in the second paragraph above.

Chuck Lingo

On 01/16/2011 08:41 PM, Eliah Kagan wrote:
> Your question #141473 on openoffice.org in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+question/141473
>
> Eliah Kagan posted a new comment:
> Perhaps a better solution is available. In order to help figure that
> out, can you specify what is less than ideal about this one?
>
> If you don't want to completely turn off AutoFormat, you can change what
> operations are performed by the AutoFormat feature (Format> AutoCorrect
>> AutoCorrect Options...). However, automatic wrapping of lines occurs
> in any word processor, regardless of whether or not there is
> autoformatting, so you don't need AutoFormat enabled for that (and you
> had indicated that you didn't want any more automatic formatting).
>
> As a separate matter from AutoFormat, you can create a document or
> template that has whatever font, size, and tab stops you want.
>

--
"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily
unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as
in a state of nature." --James Madison, Federalist No. 52, 1788

It seems that you are right that OpenOffice.org (and other current word processing programs) do not function in a way that is optimally useful to your needs. As you probably know, you can set tab stops and change margins on the horizontal ruler at the top of the screen of text, and in this way you can go on to the next line without moving the cursor to the left. However, you do manually have to set that.

For most users, the benefit of a word processing program is to function differently from a traditional typewriter, making common tasks that required extensive effort on older typewriters nearly effortless. One disadvantage of this design, however, is that a modern word processor does not function very well as a typewriter "clone." There might be current word processing programs that function like Describe for OS/2, but I am not aware of any. If you find one, I'd be interested to hear about it; while my WYSIWYG writing needs are well-met by programs like AbiWord and OpenOffice.org, I would be interested to play around with such a program, and there might even be some practical tasks for which I would find it useful.

One of the reasons why copying and pasting spatially formatted text between different applications doesn't always maintain the physical layout of the text is that text authored in a computer program tends to have both physical and logical elements. How far something is indented is a physical element, but that it constitutes its own paragraph (or section, or blockquote) is a logical element. Word processors are designed to allow the user to compose a document with a fixed physical layout (though moving documents with complex formatting from one word processing program to another often puts that goal to shame), but the emphasis in an HTML-based email is much more on logical structure. If you have a document with lines that are 7 inches wide and I view the document with 100% zoom in a window that is four inches wide, you can reasonably say that I'm doing something wrong, and that there's no need for the document to display correctly. But if you send me an email (or design a web page), and I can't view it in whatever size window I choose, that starts to reflect negatively on your email or your web page. Emails and web pages, with a few exceptions, really *shouldn't* look the same for everyone. In a web browser, I can expand the size of the text by pressing Ctrl+Plus, and I should be able to expect that the page will still be functionally laid out. Only word processing documents with simple formatting that doesn't impose serious constraints on physical layout of text can withstand a similar transformation.

Long-winded though my ramblings may be, I should hasten to add that they only touch on the surface of the issues to which they refer.

One last idea. Since modern word processors don't work like typewriters with respect to physical layout, perhaps you would be happier with the opposite extreme--creating documents where all the elements you specify (even the ones that indicate specific physical information) are specified logically. The highest-quality typesetting you can do on a computer is with a typesetting markup language like LaTeX. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX. LaTeX is available on Ubuntu and just about every other widely used operating system (including other Linux-based and non-Linux-based Unix-like systems, Windows, and Mac OS X). Creating documents with a markup language like LaTeX is technically daunting at first, but it soon becomes a highly efficient method of composition.

Eliah,

Thank you for your work on my problem. I have finally given up and
settled on using "gedit". The spell checker leaves something to be
desired in usability, but this seems to be the best compromise for me.
Thank you for the time that you put in.

Charles J. Lingo

On 01/17/2011 03:15 PM, Eliah Kagan wrote:
> Your question #141473 on openoffice.org in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+question/141473
>
> Eliah Kagan posted a new comment:
> It seems that you are right that OpenOffice.org (and other current word
> processing programs) do not function in a way that is optimally useful
> to your needs. As you probably know, you can set tab stops and change
> margins on the horizontal ruler at the top of the screen of text, and in
> this way you can go on to the next line without moving the cursor to the
> left. However, you do manually have to set that.
>
> For most users, the benefit of a word processing program is to function
> differently from a traditional typewriter, making common tasks that
> required extensive effort on older typewriters nearly effortless. One
> disadvantage of this design, however, is that a modern word processor
> does not function very well as a typewriter "clone." There might be
> current word processing programs that function like Describe for OS/2,
> but I am not aware of any. If you find one, I'd be interested to hear
> about it; while my WYSIWYG writing needs are well-met by programs like
> AbiWord and OpenOffice.org, I would be interested to play around with
> such a program, and there might even be some practical tasks for which I
> would find it useful.
>
> One of the reasons why copying and pasting spatially formatted text
> between different applications doesn't always maintain the physical
> layout of the text is that text authored in a computer program tends to
> have both physical and logical elements. How far something is indented
> is a physical element, but that it constitutes its own paragraph (or
> section, or blockquote) is a logical element. Word processors are
> designed to allow the user to compose a document with a fixed physical
> layout (though moving documents with complex formatting from one word
> processing program to another often puts that goal to shame), but the
> emphasis in an HTML-based email is much more on logical structure. If
> you have a document with lines that are 7 inches wide and I view the
> document with 100% zoom in a window that is four inches wide, you can
> reasonably say that I'm doing something wrong, and that there's no need
> for the document to display correctly. But if you send me an email (or
> design a web page), and I can't view it in whatever size window I
> choose, that starts to reflect negatively on your email or your web
> page. Emails and web pages, with a few exceptions, really *shouldn't*
> look the same for everyone. In a web browser, I can expand the size of
> the text by pressing Ctrl+Plus, and I should be able to expect that the
> page will still be functionally laid out. Only word processing documents
> with simple formatting that doesn't impose serious constraints on
> physical layout of text can withstand a similar transformation.
>
> Long-winded though my ramblings may be, I should hasten to add that they
> only touch on the surface of the issues to which they refer.
>
> One last idea. Since modern word processors don't work like typewriters
> with respect to physical layout, perhaps you would be happier with the
> opposite extreme--creating documents where all the elements you specify
> (even the ones that indicate specific physical information) are
> specified logically. The highest-quality typesetting you can do on a
> computer is with a typesetting markup language like LaTeX. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX. LaTeX is available on Ubuntu and
> just about every other widely used operating system (including other
> Linux-based and non-Linux-based Unix-like systems, Windows, and Mac OS
> X). Creating documents with a markup language like LaTeX is technically
> daunting at first, but it soon becomes a highly efficient method of
> composition.
>

--
"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily
unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as
in a state of nature." --James Madison, Federalist No. 52, 1788

I'm glad you've found something that works satisfactorily for you.

I use gedit frequently, though not typically for prose compositions (but instead, for instance, for editing source code and raw markup). It's a nice text editor. If you want a more advanced text editor, you might consider Emacs (any of its numerous variations, but GNU Emacs is the most popular, followed by XEmacs).

A text editor (such as gedit or Emacs) will also allow you to transition smoothly, if you so choose, into using a typesetting markup language like LaTeX, since documents that use a typesetting markup language are best edited in a text editor (since the markup, which *represents* formatting, is plain text).

@ChuckL
You've posted a blank comment. If you were trying to post a message, you'll have to try again.