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Subject:RE: Redefining the "Normal" style is MS Word From:"Goldstein, Dan" <DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 23 Apr 2004 12:10:38 -0400
Bruce is right, of course -- this is a very basic flaw in the documentation
process.
As a workaround, what about making the Word templates read-only? Wouldn't
that block any changes attempted from the document level?
Dan Goldstein
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Byfield
> Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 11:55 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: Redefining the "Normal" style is MS Word
>
> This thread reminds me of the fact that MS Word users take
> the fact that
> templates can be modified directly from a normal document for
> granted.
>
> So did I, once. It was only when I started using
> OpenOffice.org that I fully
> appreciated what an illogical and ill-advised idea that is. A
> template should
> set the format for a document, not the other way around, and you risk
> corruption and unexpected reformatting of documents the MS
> Word way. By
> contrast, OOo doesn't allow this behavior. As a result, it
> eliminates a whole range of problems.
>
> It seems to me that MS Word would be much more usable if the
> option not to
> modify templates from a document was simply removed. Failing
> that, I suppose
> that the best thing that can be done is to try to educate
> users not to use the option.
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