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Instruction manual creation recommendations?

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superboyac:
Ugh...a couple of years ago, I made a thread here about how to use Word's styling features.  It's such a pain in the flippin ass.  Nothing is intuitive, nothing works the way you imagine, nothing is easy.

Can I do this:
I'll make a unordered list outline.  I'll format it manually just the way I want with all my own spacing, indentations, bullet styles, font sizes...get everything exactly the way I want.

After I do that, is it possible to save that clump of text as a "style" and later, highlight a bunch of text, click on my new style I just saved, and, boom, have it work flawlessly?  This better be possible, or else I'll be compelled to drop some F bombs about MS Word.

JavaJones:
Yeah, um... you *should* be able to define a single style for one segment of text, but I don't think you can define a whole type of formatting and then apply that easily to a block of text, having it intelligently format based on positioning or something (not that I'm suggesting that's what you asked for). I also don't think you can just create e.g. a multi-level list, format it the way you want, and then create a multi-level list style out of that, where you could then apply e.g. level 3 to another bulletted list easily. That being said, as indicated in that other thread of yours, this may be easier in 2007 or 2010. Which version are you using now?

- Oshyan

superboyac:
I'm on 2007  I've just tried it, and you are right...it doesn't let you save a whole block.  Which is freaking stupid.  I mean, how long has this program been around??!  Once a year or so, these styling issues piss the hell out of me about Word.  They come out with version after version after version, and have they once made the styling easier?  No.  The biggest thing they've done is add the styling buttons to the big ribbon now, but that's just one little improvement on the frontend.  In the backend, they still use the same pain in the ass procedure to create list styles.  None of options make any sense and they never work intuitively.  Such a freaking pain.

And, of course, all the default, out of the box styles, are useless.  Huge double and triple spaces everywhere, indentations equally obnoxious (like 1 inch between the bullet and first character).  it's so stupid, I hate it so much.  Then there's that scary/funny article 40hz posted in the powerpoint thread, which shows how obnoxious thos default list styles look in a presentation.

I still can't believe nobody has made some plugin or template, or SOMETHING, that makes this whole process much easier.  Cmon, people, send me some list styles or something.

Geez...I am so pissed about this.  MS Word is one of the most widely used programs available...microsoft has made a fortune on it, they have a billion programmers working on it, all the money in the world...and do they EVER make any useful improvements like this?  No way!  They add ribbons, they add buttons, they add a bunch of tiny little fancy features that most users will never think of using.  yet, do they ever pay attention to the MAJOR things that people are clicking on 99% of the time?  No.  ARRRRGHGHGH.

JavaJones:
I'm right there with you. This is actually one of my biggest frustrations with OpenOffice (and any other Office clone for that matter): they aren't just copying the good from MS Office, they're also copying the "bad" (IMHO, of course, hehe). Maybe it's just me and naive hope, but I can't help thinking that if OpenOffice came out with better formatting tools than Office, the kind of thing you mention e.g. select a series of formatted bullets with multiple levels and auto-create a style out of it that you can freely apply to any level of bullet, that it would really gain some respect against word and set itself apart. As it is OOo is left just being an also-ran, always compared to Word, which still has some advantages in terms of UI smoothness and certainly speed. But just imagine if OOo formatting systems were a step beyond Office 2k7 or 2k10 - wouldn't that spark some more legitimate comparison and debate? Wouldn't that be a lot more interesting? Doesn't that serve OOo's goals more?

I'm tired of everyone just trying to do the crappy things MS has done, only for free, or "open source", and somehow that's supposed to be enough. What about different, *better* ways of doing it? When it comes down to it, as you said, the ribbon is really just a different way to interface with the same old semi-broken styling system. There are a few improvements to be fair, but overall it's just a new way to interact with the same old tools. What about new tools, or at least *smarter* tools?

Adobe has just come out with CS5 Suites, and though they really have no major competition, they've added a pretty nice array of new features, including Content Aware Fill (which arguably had competition from a GIMP plugin well before its release, but let's ignore that for a moment :D). Where is the Content Aware Fill equivalent in MS Word? Come on people!

- Oshyan

parkint:
I would offer a word of warning: be sure to keep some sort of backup copy of EVERYTHING.
Especially with MSWord, there will be a time* when a user makes changes to a document and it becomes unreadable.
I am a big fan of git for version control & backup.  I acknowledge that 'average users' are not able to understand the concepts of version control.
But, one of the great attributes of git is that all the revision information can be 'transported' easily (it is maintained in a single folder).  I have done precisely this, in this way:

* I have a 'controlled' copy of everything on a server (in a share only I have permission to)
* Using git I can capture changes - as the 'updates' are passed to me by other users (in my case it is only ONE other person)
* That server-backed copy of my files becomes the MASTER.
Good luck.  Your task is complicated by the fact that, besides managing information (and the technical logistics) you must manage people and "The Idiot Principle" [a kin to The Peter Principle].


*When that occurs and you think back to this post, you can call me "Jeanne Dixon". LOL

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