Re: Heading Style won't stick
- From: "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 10:59:25 +1000
Hi Henry:
On 15/4/06 2:53 AM, in article C065219A.180EE%henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"henryn" <henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The bad paragraph may have had a "Heading 2 char char" style applied.
I'm not sure what that means. Null character styles, maybe?
No.. "Linked Styles". They're a construct of the later versions of Word
that constitute the most laughter-injury-producing design bug Microsoft has
so far come up with!
The original problem was that really knee-cap-level users could not
understand the difference between lines and paragraphs and selections.
In the beginning, it was simple and worked properly. If you applied a
character style, it applied to the selected text (or not at all, if there
was no selection). If you applied a paragraph style, it applied regardless
of what you had selected, because the selection was always in a paragraph.
Users could not understand that paragraph marks were somehow "significant",
so Microsoft "fixed" that by allowing users to hide their paragraph marks.
Then users could not understand that their formatting would sometimes apply,
and sometimes not, depending on what they had selected.
So Microsoft "fixed" it so that if you selected less than half of a
paragraph and applied formatting, the formatting you applied would be
applied only to the selected text. If you selected more than half, the
formatting would be applied to the whole paragraph. The rule was based on
percentage, and was never published, which simply added another source of
stress and worry and unpredictability to people trying to use Word to get
correctly formatted documents out on time.
Then the users could not understand that unless they SELECTED a whole
paragraph, Word could not apply a paragraph style to it. So Microsoft
"fixed" that too... Now, if you select "part" of a paragraph but NOT the
paragraph mark, Word will apply your formatting only to the selected
characters.
If the formatting you choose to apply happens to be a style of type
paragraph, Word "should" do nothing (and that's what it used to do...). So
Microsoft "fixed" that too... Now, Word instead creates a new mutant style
called a "Linked Style". It's a fifth style type. It contains only the
Character Formatting properties of the paragraph style you chose, but is
linked to it. As opposed to a "True" Character style, that contains only
the character formatting properties but no linkages. Whereas a Character
style allows the properties of the underlying paragraph style to "shine
through" unless modified in the Character style, a Linked style does not.
If you look it up in Format>Style>Organiser... You will see that Word has
appended the name "Char" to the original style name.
See how "simple" they have now made it? Is it any wonder that there's a
headlong rush away from Word: now it's so simple that even ordinary mortals
with a university graduation and a successful law practice haven't a hope of
working out how to use it :-)
In their screaming haste to render their product unusable by removing
consistency from the function designed to produce consistency, the clueless
newbie who designed this mechanism forgot to turn off his inanity in the
case where the user on the second attempt again selects "part" of a
paragraph: but this time selects the "Heading 3 Char" style (which usually
helpfully sorts to the top of the list immediately it is created, right
under the user's nose).
So on the second attempt, Word creates Heading 3 Char Char, and on the third
attempt (assuming the user always picks the "top" style, and has the
formatting palette width set too narrow to see what they're really doing...)
"Heading 3 Char Char Char".
The whole thing is a constant source of mirth and derision to document
professionals, to whom its almost an "in joke". The depth and scale to
which the designer of this mechanism simply did NOT understand the
fundamental PURPOSE of styles, or even the basic requirements for formatting
a document, are just breath-taking. The designer of this mechanism is so
stupid that you would wonder whether he actually has enough intelligence to
be declared "sane". His boss, on the other hand, who approved this design,
is so sloppy you could only call him "negligent". He CANNOT have read the
design documents for this, without this appalling error becoming immediately
apparent.
They made a mad scramble to fix this in Word 2002 SP1. There, by default,
they have "hidden" the names of the Char Char styles in the Task Pane, so
the user is less likely to select them and re-apply them.
By Word 2003, the scale of the disaster was becoming apparent, even to
Marketing. So they introduced another fix: they expanded the maximum string
length of a style name, to try to prevent the burgeoning occurrences of
document corruption caused by the appended "char" suffices overflowing the
style name string and corrupting the document style table (and thus, the
document).
Last week, I encountered a new personal best example of this horror: A
style that had been "Chared" more than 50 times... Each of the Char styles,
remember, refers to the predecessor which refers to... Which refers to...
For a truly magical entertainment experience, pick one of the earlier
iterations: say the fifth generation, and apply a different style to
paragraphs formatted with it (anything but "normal" style). Then delete the
particular Char Char variant from the document. The mayhem that results
amongst the other 45 descendants just has to be experienced to be believed.
DON'T close the document: Word will never be able to open it again!!
As far as I know Word is entirely stock condition. (Yeah, yeah, I know, you
encourage me to customize, but I don't see any advantage in doing so when a
stock system is so unreliable -- customization might uncover further
vulnerabilities, and variations in customization may mean different problems
depending on the details.)
Like a Harley Davidson, Word is made to be improved. Like a Harley
Davidson, Word is slow, under-powered and handles like a supermarket trolley
until you DO improve it :-)
If that was your problem, selecting the bad paragraph and hitting Control +
Spacebar to remove the crap character style would have fixed it.
"Control-spacebar"? Now there's an easy-to-remember combination! Is there
a corresponding menu item? How would this differ from choosing "Clear
Formatting" -- which I did try?
"Clear Formatting" removes all formatting, back to "Style 0" (Normal Style).
Ctrl + SpaceBar removes only Direct character formatting and styles. Of type
"character". Command + Option + Q removes only direct paragraph formatting,
resetting back to the applied paragraph style + any applied character
formatting, direct or styled.
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
.
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