Re: word processor document format: what parts?

[Christopher Curtis <ccurtis ee fit edu>]

On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Keith Wright wrote:

> > From: Christopher Curtis <ccurtis@ee.fit.edu>
> > 
> > When someone sits down to start typing on a "balnk sheet", the first line
> > should already be indented according to a deafult style sheet.  People
> > will find this confusing, but will take the time to figure out how or why,
> 
> No defaults!  When you create a new blank document, you get a dialog box
> with choices

Okay, uhm ... I was thinking more like the little gallery that MS products
have: Letter, Business, Presentation, Memo, etc, etc, full of crappy
backgrounds and unreadable text and horrible fonts, etc, etc.

Then there's a "blank paper" style.  I think that even *this* should have
defaults (yes, defaults!).  Why?  Well, even if you don't like what you
are given, you're going to change it anyway.  That is to say, your
examples:

> ( ) Unstructured Notes
> ( ) Create New Style

were be better served *with* defaults than without.  There really is
nothing that is an unstructured note, and these should by all means be
discouraged.  In a worst-case scenario, the user can create their own
style with absolutely no tags whatsoever and save it as a template, but I
don't think that this would be beneficial to anyone to have as an option
by default.  Create new Style, even, would benefit from having defaults.
This is like the difference between using a Dialog Builder for a GUI or
coding each component by hand.  Even though MSVC++ throws a tons of crap
in even the smallest project, most people prefer to edit out the stuff
they don't need, rather than build the thing from the bottom up.

> classes are available.  Also, please distinguish "document class"
> (what structure tags are available for use in the document) from
> "style sheet" (fonts and formatting to use to render each tag).

Yes, this was what I was trying to say.  Thanks.  =)

Christopher