outlining help

brett · Guest

First, thanks to the volunteer developers who've brought us this great project!

I'd like to switch to NeoOffice for my writing needs, but I can't figure out how to make the outlining function work. There's no outline option under the view menu, and I can't figure out how the "outline numbering" tool works. Too spoiled by Word and AppleWorks, I guess, where you just switch to outline view and then in one click designate which level the topic will be or if it'll be regular text. I'd appreciate a step-by-step guide; I searched the forum and the help file but couldn't find the specific guidance I needed.

This is off topic, but I had my first Neo experience yesterday; I'd loaded NeoOffice on my Powerbook but hadn't had a chance to try it out. A friend brought a CD for a presentation, but his Powerbook wouldn't read it. I offered mine, not realizing that he'd saved his presentation as a Powerpoint file. I don't have Powerpoint loaded on my Powerbook (only load MS stuff as a last resort), so I thought we were SoL, but he double clicked on the file, and sure 'nuff, Neo imported and ran the slideshow perfectly. I told everyone there about Neo; maybe they'll try it. In that moment, I realized that the world is really changing.... thanks to all who made this happen.

sardisson · Town Crier Joined: Feb 01, 2004 Posts: 4588

Welcome aboard!

Guest · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject:

Thanks... I looked at the Navigator, and maybe it can help with outlining, but if so, I can't quite figure out how.

As for using my little anecdote in the press kit, sure, go ahead -- if you'll consider improving the outlining function so that it's easier to figure out and use. Word or AppleWorks are pretty good at the basic outline f unctions.

And while I'm tossing out unsolicited suggestions, howzabout making the outliner work like Mellel's, where the outline is displayed in a sidebar, and when you click on a topic, the main window displays the text under that topic? Makes navigating through long docs much easier. That might be the factor that makes me buy Mellel instead of using Neo for writing, but I promise to use Neo whenever I need its other functions.

It's also nice to be able to recommend to my writing students (most of whom are already in debt to go to college, buy textbooks and computer etc) a solid, universally compatible app (either Neo or Open Office) that they don't have to shell out big bucks for, regardless of platform.
Again, thanks to all of you volunteers who work so hard to lower the digital divide. Your work is going to make a difference to lots of people, I hope.

OPENSTEP · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:25 am Post subject:

NeoOffice/J is focused really on Mac OS X porting...for general functionality enhancements to the OpenOffice.org suite you may want to try filing bugs against OpenOffice.org directly at:

http://qa.openoffice.org

NeoOffice doesn't generally make the best place to request or recommend general OpenOffice.org functionality requests Smile

ed

bbjonz · Pure-blooded Human Joined: Jun 01, 2005 Posts: 31

Don't know if this helps, but the way to do bullets and numbering with the outline feature is to use the "tab" key to indent. If you want to go back up a level, use "shift+tab". If you want to change the outline scheme itself (i.e., the symbols that each level gets) then highlight the outline, click on "bullets and numbering" and choose or create the scheme you'd like.

Works for me, anyway...

Joe

sardisson · Town Crier Joined: Feb 01, 2004 Posts: 4588

If it turns out none of us can give you a satisfactory answer (and that's starting to look like the case Sad

), you should also try the forums at http://oooforum.org. While we're the best souce of info about Mac-specific issues, oooforum is stocked with experts on *using* OOo and OOo-based programs in general Smile

(Neo/J 1.1 is equivalent to OOo 1.1.4 in case people need to know, but I think Neo/J is getting fairly well-known over there.)

Smokey

Guest · Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 8:40 pm Post subject:

Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I tried the OOffice forum, and the consensus seems to be that the Outlining feature needs work. However, it may be possible to what I want using the Navigator, Stylist etc. I'll give it a try -- but I do hope that the volunteer developers will consider making outlining easier and more intuitive. Word's outlining feature is pretty easy to use, but not as powerful as Mellel's, which unfortunately is not at all intuitive and takes way too long (for me) to master. Maybe someday NeoOffice will have outlining that's as powerful as Mellel's and as easy to use as Word's, or better yet, OmniOutliner.
Anyway, I'm still encouraged by the rapid development of NeoOffice and plan to use it a lot in future, even if I wind up going with Mellel for my writing needs for now because I need to finish this book now, and Mellel has the features I need at the moment. Best of luck and happy coding to all you good folks.