RE: Inept numbering in OOo?

["Dan Goldstein" <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>]

[Bruce Byfield wrote] Please feel free to post this for me:

Sarah sounds as though she is bashing her head against the wrong wall.
To set up headings the way she wants, she needs Tools > Outline
Numbering.  Two or three choices, and it's all set up. 

And why isn't this function part of styles? Frankly, I don't have the
smallest idea.

While I'm on the subject, I should also mention that there's no need to
spend "days" on a problem like this. The OpenOffice.org User list is
extremely responsive, and in most cases, problems are answered in a
matter of minutes. You can also search through the online archives at:

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=users

In this case, I know that this problem has been raised many times. The
solution is quirky and different enough from MS Office that lots of
people have faced it.

Finally, Sarah comments:

"I think this is an example where a corporate/capitalist enterprise
works more efficiently than a loose collection of dedicated volunteers:
there is no incentive in the latter to knuckle down and actually fix 
the things that are wrong. If the fix involved is long, difficult and 
boring, why do it?"

The answer is simple: Open Source developers fix things because they
want to use the program itself. 

But the comment is rather ironic, considering that the majority of
people coding for OpenOffice.org are employees of Sun Microsystems; Sun,
of course, supports OpenOffice.org so it can put out StarOffice, the
proprietary version.  So, really, this problem is a matter of how a
corporation responds to a problem, not volunteers.

- Bruce Byfield 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sarah Stegall
> 
> The biggest flaw in OO is its ridiculously inept numbering 
> features. This
> "feature" is buggier than South Florida in May.
> 
> Seriously, this is a deal breaker. I write engineering 
> documentation; my
> users absolutely demand the outline type numbering they are 
> used to (section
> 1, subsection 1.1, subsubsection 1.1.1, etc.). I have 
> literally spent days
> trying to get an otherwise flawless document in OpenOffice to 
> correctly
> number the headers in my document. Folks, this is simply a matter of
> counting. You don't get any more basic when it comes to computer
> programming, yet somehow the OpenOffice developers are unable 
> to master this
> feature. I have had to take several very important documents 
> BACK into MS
> Word just so I can get the blasted numbers right; it's that 
> or hand-number
> them in OO. Although this problem comes up frequently in the 
> OO forums, it
> has NOT been fixed even in the latest release, despite claims to the
> contrary.
> 
> I think this is an example where a corporate/capitalist 
> enterprise works
> more efficiently than a loose collection of dedicated 
> volunteers: there is
> no incentive in the latter to knuckle down and actually fix 
> the things that
> are wrong. If the fix involved is long, difficult and boring, 
> why do it? A
> capitalist enterprise, which MUST please its customers, has 
> every incentive
> to require showstopping bugs to be fixed.
> 

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