[Cadaver]

OK, I'm from the old school of word processing.... think MacWrite (actually, think AppleWorks for the Apple //e, but that's too old for this topic).

Want bold? Highlight text, go up to Style, select Bold. Want bold, underline, italics? Repeat above three times. Want a paragraph with narrower margins? Type, then change the margins in the ruler. Then, when done, change 'em back.

I see today's word processors make use of style sheets, both for lines and paragraphs. I can see these styles can include both font information and margin/formatting information. Does anyone have a good source (book is ok, online is preferred) for tips to make most efficient use of these preset styles? I still find myself thinking the "old way" when it comes to formatting, which obviously has its limitations.

Believe it or not, but I've written about a dozen scientific publications over the last 6 years - all done the old fashioned MacWrite way. Its time to get modern about this. Help this old fart move to 21st century word processing.

As for apps, I've actually bought virtually all of them... Word, Mellel, Pages, Nisus Writer Express, etc.

[threestain]

do you know how to do CSS stuff? If not I think that would a really good place to start, as the tutorials and so on around are pretty good and start at a nice easy level.

Plus it all interplays quite well, or at least that's what I've found anyway!

[Big Mac]

Cadaver is not talking about web development, just word processing. I too do not utilize style sheets to the extent that I should, Cadaver, although I have always used a lot of keyboard shortcuts for styles and alignment.

[cpac]

Mellel might be the best place for you to start since it *requires* you to do things using styles - but really all of those you mentioned have style capability.

The easiest way I've found to start using and getting used to styles generally is to get an unformatted document, and then format it completely using styles. (One good exercise might be to take a formatted document, copy it and paste it as unformatted text into a new document - then try to recreate the formatted document using styles only).

Using styles within the word processing context like this isn't like CSS really (though they share many of the same advantages) and while each application has its own nuances and quirks, they all work basically the same way.

Good luck!

[wataru]

Scientific publications that use equations? I suggest LaTeX if that's the case. There's nothing more powerful out there, but there's a steep learning curve.

[threestain]

fair points, its just that I started off by learning how CSS worked, and was very easily able to transfer it across. I didn't find that many good tutorials on word processing either - almost as if everyone 'should' know how it all works!

But then that's just me!

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Cadaver is not talking about web development, just word processing.

This is true, but the concepts are the same. Working with HTML lets you get under the hood and see how it all fits together, and that helps some people wrap their heads around the stylesheet concept. Conversely, word-processing with styles can help some people wrap their heads around CSS and semantic HTML. The ideas actually work together pretty well.

[Cadaver]

Thanks for the advice, folks. I probably should sit down with a de-formatted document and try to re-format it. I'll probably have to go thru whatever app I use and create the styles I like to use first, I presume...?

As for Wataru's question - no, I use very few equations. These are mostly medical clinical research papers, not hard core bench science. But thanks for the suggestion.

Originally posted by wataru:
Scientific publications that use equations? I suggest LaTeX if that's the case. There's nothing more powerful out there, but there's a steep learning curve.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Thanks for the advice, folks. I probably should sit down with a de-formatted document and try to re-format it. I'll probably have to go thru whatever app I use and create the styles I like to use first, I presume...?

That's generally the way to do it, yes. It can help (if you're using Word or something that has lots of pre-defined styles) to give all your styles the same prefix, so that they are together on the list.

If your document/word processor doesn't have any pre-defined styles, so much the better...

[Cadaver]

Does Mellel actually come with no pre-defined styles, or did I screw mine up months ago when playing with the styles palette (without knowing what I was doing)?

I just downloaded the 1.9 update, but don't see any style additions (but glad to see the brushed metal can be turned off now).