In the faint hope that I would pickup some unknown productivity tip I found myself reading “Writing documents with OpenOffice.org Writer” by Marco Marongiu. Marco did a good job of producing a basic tutorial, but the way he introduced the use of styles made me want to rant about an old pet peeve of mine…
Writing content first and then styling is missing half the point of the styles. The styles not only facilitate formatting : they also give the document a hierarchical outline. Writing using a text processing tool that support an outline mode make me much more productive as I can use the word processor not only as a writing tool but as a tool that supports my thinking. Microsoft Word has it but Openoffice Writer does not. Contrary to what the Openoffice FAQ claims, the Navigator does not provide even a fraction of the functionality of MS Word’s outline mode.
A year ago, Jim Sabatke said about OO Writer : “For example, it can’t collapse multiple sections at a time so you can view/edit several other sections. For some reason, open source word processor teams are resisting this functionality that is an important “thinking” and “organizing” feature that many have come to depend on in almost every MS Windows Word processor”. Make sure you take a look at Outliners.com : wou will understand where the many people like me come from ! As Robert P. J Day said about the outline mode : “MS Word is *exactly* what you want to emulate here. There is no need to do things “differently” or “better” from Word WRT outlining - they got it right”. I wholeheartedly agree and I am very surprised to see that in the Openoffice issue tracker outline mode is a low priority issue that has been open since 2002 - that is more than four years !
Considering how important it is to many people I know (who are quite representative of the technical writing community) and how much it has been discussed for years all over the Net I really don’t understand why outline mode has not been given more attention within the Openoffice project. If I was in a bad mood I would say that this project has a bad case of NIH… But I am not the sort of person who would carry libelous rumors such as this one…
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December 27th, 2006 at 6:58
I’ve tried with the openoffice crowd. Apart from finding it difficult to get my comments heard and getting chastised for not placing my comments and replies in the right places (is not easy for someone not familiar with the development process to just drop in to give some well meaning comments).
However, I’ve been pushing for MSWORD type outlining again and again and again, and the constant reply I get is that the Navigator does that. The navigator DOES NOT DO THAT!!!! It is almost like the developers have never used outline mode, which I find really incredible. I’m a professional software developer with 25 years experience, and Outline mode is pretty much ESSENTIAL to the generation of specifications, design specs, technical analysis documents, paper development, business plans, marketing plans, etc, etc…..pretty much ALL RELEVANT documents in a normal company. So, bottom line, OpenOffice, which I otherwise would consider a good product, fails miserably because it doesn’t have this feature in Writer. If this feature were added to writer,I would really fear for Microsoft, which is why I think that the OOffice team has Microsoft Plants in there. Why else would they ignore THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE IN THEIR ENTIRE PRODUCT. I CANNOT switch to openoffice until Outline works like MSWord….sorry. Thus, I see no point in switching with any of the other packages. It is as simple as that. You add the outlining, and I’ll switch ALL packages to use OOFfice.
I’m in the process of trying to put together a set of tools for starting a company right now. I’d LOVE to not have to use MS OFFICE, but I cannot because Outline mode is NOT SUPPORTED in OpenOffice. No, it is not supported and the crappy navigator does not do what MSWord can do.
MS wins until this is done. Simple as that.
Thank you for this post as it reflects something I’ve been trying to get across to the OOffice crowd for some time. They don’t seem to get it. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE, and will decide the success or failure of open office.
-Donald
December 27th, 2006 at 18:50
What’s even more amazing is that on the feature request list, outline mode has the second-most number of votes. So not only are the programmers ignoring a major MSW feature, they’re ignoring their own users too.
This blog article has been posted in the forum discussion section on this issue. Thought you’d like to know.
Final comment: it looks like someone has been assigned this issue and hopefully we’ll see something in the next version!
December 27th, 2006 at 23:27
So far I have had nothing but positive feedback. I did not think that this small article would generate significant reactions. It is good to see that I am not the only one giving thought to this issue. Let’s all continue spreading the outlining gospel !
February 3rd, 2007 at 15:53
There is now a followup to this article showing that not only did the OO team listen, but that their ambitions have also gone beyond the requests for an outline mode !
March 27th, 2007 at 11:40
I agree wholeheartedly. I could move my whole organisation to linux and openoffice if it wasn’t for the terrible support for outlining in writer! ridiculous but true.
March 27th, 2007 at 18:39
The only 3 reasons I don’t move completely to OpenOffice are:
1. Outline mode in Writer
2. Text to columns in Calc
3. Slow ODBC response in Base
For me these are 3 show stoppers to an otherwise great package
April 9th, 2007 at 11:41
I agree with all of the comments above that Outlining is the remaining ‘killer’ functionality missing from OpenOffice. I would like to suggest that this functionality be combined with a Mindmapping (see Wikipedia article, there are several good GPL projects) functionality as it is better for large conceptual projects for brainstorming and graphically structuring the thinking process. Mindmapping directly replicates the way the brain generates and connects ideas. The structures from mindmapping could be transfered to Outlining mode for further refinement or directly into an OpenOffice odt.
April 9th, 2007 at 17:25
While I was the original replier to this email, and am still a proponent of getting MSWORD outlining mode into OpenOffice, I’m now starting to believe in the DocBook approach to documentation where the content is seperated from the presentation. The current project and company where I’m working (must remain nameless) is doing this. THe main tool in use is XMLMind (standard edition is free). it is very good for outline mode (until you go beyond level 4….I think the css or xslt code is messed up beyond level 4). However, I am now a faithful believer in seperation of content from presentation. To illustrate why this is so please check out this site and explore it a bit: http://www.csszengarden.com/
What I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE to see Openoffice do is take 2 steps ahead of the rest of the world and 1. Have outline mode (not having that is archaic) 2. Have a special saving mode that will save in DocBook mode with appropriate XSLT and have an export mode that will export to either “Html and .CSS” OR “.pdf” (for printing).
The latter they already have….the others they do not….
This is the path of documentation. Nobody is leading at the moment and this is an opportunity for OpenOffice to jump ahead by providing a word processor that is more than just an XML editor.
Good Luck and may you guys see the light.
May 15th, 2007 at 20:15
Maybe the OO developers are afraid Microsoft will sue them for patent infringement if they add a usable outline mode to the suite…
May 15th, 2007 at 21:56
A possible explanation for why this isn’t being tackled is here:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer_Views
It turns out that some very fundamental ways that Writer works will have to be changed to provide this functionality, so it requires a major overhaul. I’m not saying it’s not worth the effort, but it’s a problem that requires a much bigger solution than it would first appear.
February 20th, 2008 at 0:23
I agree with you about outline mode in MS Word. It is nothing short of useless. I use Ecco Pro and have thousands of notes well organized in it. I have also used NotePad and Omni Outliner which are both excellent (but Mac OSX only).
I hope that Open Office Dudes can get such features into the mix when (if) they do major re-writes.
In the meantime, I am Ecco’ing away quite happily ;)
April 6th, 2008 at 4:14
I really like using Open Office. Though I am highly disappointed as I was getting ready to write something that outlining mode would be wonder for helping me with, and then I find that OO does not support outlining. I certainly would appreciate it if the OO team would include this capability real soon.
In the meantime, I guess I need to look for other tools to fill this gap…
August 28th, 2008 at 16:05
I aggree with the comments posted here. Outline mode is CRITCAL and OO DOESN’T do it. I recently switched to MAC, I really wanted to use OO, but without outline mode it is no use to me. I ended up buying an outliner for the MAC and it still isn’t as convenient as the outliner in Word (and I am not normally a Microsoft fan). Major overhaul required or not, it is time for this functionality. Enough already, get it done. Zero chance I will use OO until it is.
November 7th, 2008 at 23:04
I haven’t used Word’s outline mode, but I think I both agree and disagree here.
I use OO.o to produce some of the most complex hierarchially-organized documents you can deal with — legal pleadings. OO.o’s style features can be a little primitive in this regard, though still more predictable than Word in my experience (specifically: even despite the limited UI, it’s hard to make OO.o ‘lose its mind’ when manipulating or nesting lists, and nearly impossible to create a document that cannot be ‘repaired’).
OO.o uses styles specifically for presentation, and sections (a separate concept) for almost nothing (actually, sections seem to exist mainly because they’re the only way to insert certain types of break).
Word, meanwhile, uses style-and-formatting type features for both presentation and conceptual organization.
Anyone else find both approaches logically broken?
What would be appropriate would be to have both a logical hierarchy (to create a “conceptual view”, including interactive outlining) and a print hierarchy that can either hang on, or be “painted on” independent of/overriding, the logical hierarchy.
Of course, it would also be helpful to have UI to migrate back and forth between the two classes — “turn everything italic into headings”; “print every heading italic.” (The opportunities for this with lists and printed “outlines,” particularly where you need many independent lists with identical formatting, are many and much-needed.)
November 7th, 2008 at 23:18
I believe no one will counter your point that Microsoft Word is much better than Openoffice at corrupting documents in creative ways.
What is liked about the Outline Mode is the outliner user interface. I don’t believe that most users see a problem with mixing style and substance - that is what WYSIWYG did to them…
I’m not against mixing structure and style either - as long as structure comes first. To me, the Microsoft Word approach is fine, but I’m ready to convert to another way of thinking if someone can convince me that it is better.