I know that for the "Stylists" this is a hated enhancement but for those of us that work between different people and different word processors, "Reveal Codes" is a major tool to find strange formatting problems due to importing and exporting documents over and over. This is the same request as has been for Open Office since 2002. http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3395 This request will add many businesses that stick with WordPerfect to the list of users that don't like the MS Office or OpenOffice way of doing things. I understand that Styles work really well when you create a document from scratch but when you are taking a document that has been created by one or many other people, finding all the formatting issues are a major problem. It is not easy to remove all formatting each and ever time you get a version of the document to install and use "styles" There is no guarantee that the styles will remain if someone uses WordPerfect on the document. In the OOo enhancement request, I suggested that if OOo would just have a display box that showed all the various styles and formats that are being used and an ability to delete/edit them, this would provide many of the features of Reveal Codes. It may actually promote styles in a better way. I am going to copy and paste my suggestion from the OOo enhancement. (My user name on the OOo site is mestech) ============== From the discussion about Reveal Codes on the Users mail list I have some thoughts to add. As all the formatting properties are stored as styles tokens (T1-Tx) in the content.xml, and thus must be in memory, make this information available in a simple dialog. As one user suggested, a properties map that reveals the various styles and formatting properties used at the cursor location would be a great help. I feel that this would be almost as good as reveal codes. Moving the cursor could indicate where a formatting property changes. Add the ability to change or delete properties within this pop-up box and now you have a type of reveal codes. Or at least take you to the property that made this change. I know that some info is displayed in various locations but that is a pain. As a test I made a simple document that had some formatting changes and examined the content.xml file to see what happened when I made changes. What I see is a simple way to display all the information about formatting in an easy way. If Jannz's macro can display this info, why not make an integrated tool to do a better job. I also suggest that there be a menu or added feature to show where the formatting makes changes within a document. Selecting View > Non-Printing Characters will show some formatting features. A second choice of showing the formatting (T1-Tx) token positions, would also help. Especially when trying to find that one piece of code that was imported that screwed up your whole document. There is no reason to stick with the answer that this is how they do it in Word so this is how we will do it. I think we need to look at how OOo can be made better. Reveal codes are better for people that do not have total control over all aspects of a document and have to work with multiple sources and formats and hopefully get into a single working format. ========= Further to the suggestion. After some thinking. Reveal Codes is a way of showing the formatting at a particular location within the document. In OOo, this is the collected formatting of the document that make up the various properties as set by the styles. A properties display box that is similiar to the Styles and Formatting box could solve most of the reveal codes demands. A display box that shows the relevant stlyles used, fonts and font controls in a simple box. A box that allows the cursor to be moved and the dialog updates as the cursor moves. This box then could allow someone to change, remove or edit the style as in the Styles and Formatting box. Now people can say that this feature is already available but not in an easy to use way. Someone could search through their style and formatting box for each and every character location and not find that one point where the formatting is wrecked. My suggestion would be a box that floats or attaches at the bottom or top of the screen. Like the Reveal codes box on WP. In the box would be something like this. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Page style: Index Paragraph style: Contents 4 Character style: Placeholder Frame style: Default Lists style: Default Font: Times new Roman B U I ------------------------------------------------------------------- If the cursor is moved and the font changes due to the Character style, then this information would be quickly seen. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Page style: Index Paragraph style: Contents 4 Character style: Placeholder 2 Frame style: Default Lists style: Default Font: Nimubus Roman B U I ------------------------------------------------------------------- Now the person will know that the formattng change was due to the change in the Character style without having to go through all the various dialogs. A simple indication of where the change is. Now the user could decide to delete, change or modify the style Character style. This dialog must update with the cursor movements. I feel that this dialog box would resolve most of the Reveal Code demands within the framework of how OOo works with documents. ============ Looking at this XML coding from a test document, I want to expand on the ability to work in the current framework of OOo to create a dialog box similiar to reveal codes. ---- Style defenition. <style:style style:name="T3" style:family="text"><style:text-properties fo:font-style="italic" style:text-underline-style="solid" style:text-underline-width="auto" style:text-underline-color="font-color" style:font-style-asian="italic" style:font-style-complex="italic"/> ------ Location that the style is implemented. <text:span text:style-name="T3">another </text:span> ------- Now if there was an option to reveal the locations of the "span" statements that were live or clickable or with the attributes displayed in a dialog box at the bottom/top of the screen, then most of what those that are requesting Reveal Codes is implemented. The individual style number (T3) could be highlited or indicated in some way. Thus if styles are nested, then users would be able to see them. I think the idea of live icons would be better than the WP of reveal codes as this could show the nesting over a larger span than just a few lines of text. As in the above case, more than the change to italic is supplied within the style defenition. ======== I wish I had Reveal Codes for the bug that I just submitted on Formatting and losing footers. Hopefully this will be a leading step to make LibreOffice better than WordPerfect, MS Office and OpenOffice.org.
This one change would allow me to make serious, professional use of LibreOffice Writer. Without this, it's useless to me. The attitude of developers on this in the past has been discreditable, and I hope LibreOffice will take a sounder view. It is not true that the "styles" system is adequate in all cases. But this is more than just a question of whether users ought to use styles or not. Designing a product to limit users' information about, and control over, their own files, is simply bad engineering practice, and the result is a flawed product.
> The attitude of developers on this in the past has been > discreditable, and I hope LibreOffice will take a > sounder view. The main difference between LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org is that it is much easier to contribute to LibreOffice. So all you need to do is implement your pet feature (or convince somebody else to do it), in a somewhat sane and clean way, and it will most certainly be hoyfully accepted into the source code and be part of the next release, and for LibreOffice releases are supposed to be regular and time-based. If you think that now with LibreOffice there would exist a large bunch of dedicated developers sitting idle just waiting for bug reporters to tell them what new features to implement, you are wrong. The best way to motivate *companies* which pay for the full-time developers working on LibreOffice is money. If you give credible indication that you, your employer, or some other organisation, will purchase a significant number of support contracts for LibreOffice (or LibreOffice support as part of some larger offering) if only this feature was implemented, that might make it more likely for such companies to put their employees onto that task. After all, if "serious, professional use" (your words) is involved, then "serious money" is also involved, right?
[This is an automated message.] This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases. Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1 more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html
suppose that in LibO this it not yet implemented, so change status to New this functionality can be useful for debugging of LibO, because we can see directly, what happens inside of document, instead of save document and see internals of odt file. IMHO it makes sense to implement something like this if it consumes not much work of developers
Law offices in DC who switched from WP to MS soon lost productivity and saw an unacceptable drop in quality of their work products. No matter what a programmer may theorize, a blind person does NOT have full control of his or her formatting codes. A large firm paid a programmer (... one of the original programmers for GIMP) to write a plugin for MS-Word that would open a reveal codes window in word. The program is called "CrossEyes." It used to be expensive, but it is now available for free. Although I will continue to use WP because of RC, I've heard that law offices using Word with Cross Eyes have had improvements in productivity and document quality. It's only logical. The secretaries were finally able to understand why their pool editing was never printing out exactly as originally expected. Yes, even lowly secretaries can understand and make good use of seeing formatting codes. Search on "Cross Eyes - Reveal Codes in Word" Reveal Codes means visibility to format coding. There is NO truth in WYSIWYG on a monitor when real output will be sent (at great expense) to a highly precise priner. Visibility of codes is an ESSENTIAL feature for precise output. Word processors output to printers and pdf, and sometimes to structured text files, all of which are as unforgiving as possible in terms of object placement. Web programmers get to see their HTML code and their output devices are about as forgiving as possible. Printers are more precise, and mistakes are expensive, ecologically and financially. Full visibility of ALL format codes is just not an option. I don't understand the footdragging. Why copy a loser ... WordPerfect invented Styles. Styles work in WP because users have access to ALL the codes in a style. Bill Gates thought he could reinvent styles and have writers send their output to highly precise and unforgiving machines by hiding the codes from us ... hahaha. What a JOKE! The QUALITY of printed product in the workplace globally has declined dramatically ever since Gates tried to force his Word product on us (by having Windows registry step on the clock cycles whenever WP was running). WP also allows a user to search for specific format and style codes. For anyone who works with scanned documents, OCR (optical character recognition) programs really pile on the junk codes, trying to scale a best fit to the imperfect page scans. The junk formatting cannot be repaird in MSWord or OO because the junk codes cannot be revealed, or searched on and deleted. WP allows document search and delete on ALL formating codes. A simple macro remove the junk formatting from OCR (no way around it), while saving the important formatting, like italics, bold and font size. If you've never worked with reveal codes, and have a copy of MS Office, search on Cross Eyes Reveal Codes for Word. If MS adopts a reveal codes feature, the open source community will have some serious political egg on its face for a few years while it tries to catch up with the obvious. Gates will be laughing ... "Look how hidden the so-called open source community really is ..."
Thanks for so long and interesting comment. I agree that such functionality is useful. IMHO such functionality, at least partially, can be written on Basic macro. Please, search among existing extensions for OpenOffice and LibreOffice. May be something with such functionality already exist. And something like this already exist in LibreOffice, when "Extended tooltips" enabled, Writer shows formatting in tooltip. > For anyone who works with scanned documents, OCR ... I save document in rtf format and then reload it again. Most of unuseful formatting are lost, and remaining is more easy to edit.
*** Bug 62342 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I also would like to have a feature to see the source code. I feel thats very useful sometimes. I have a huge homepage www.gesundohnepillen.de and edit this using dreamweaver - because there is a window where I can type in the text and there is another window for the code. Therefore I am able to see the code, to correct the code and keep the code as small as possible. Sometimes its possible to reduce the code substancially without changing the function. The result is a much smaller better performing site. I really would like such a show/edit feature in LO.
*** Bug 74554 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 69544 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is would be a fantastic feature to add. It was one of my favorites when I used WordPerfect and everybody I know much prefered to over anything Microsoft even remotely offered in their product. Would love to see this in LibreOffice.
To Robin: have you tested LO 5.2? The "properties" side bar might satisfy some of what you would like to see. There may be improvements to the Properties sidebar, and now might be a good time to request such improvements.
(In reply to bertramc from comment #5) Couldn’t have said it better myself! My firm edits a lot of different documents, Word docs, pdfs, scanned/OCR, etc., many of which need to be perfect for professional printing. For me and my team, programs without a reveal codes feature are dead in the water. There is no way to edit and produce quality documents without it. Period. And for those that believe it isn’t necessary, don’t use it, but the feature should be available to those of us that depend on it and know its value. I would love to switch to LO from WordPerfect, but until we have the ability to view, search, and edit style codes, we’ll have to stay with WordPerfect.
Add another vote for this change. I've moved to Linux and want to leave the MS world completely but currently have to run a virtual machine for WP. As a +20 year user of WP I find reveal codes its most useful tool. Working in LO without it is really working blind, incredibly frustrating and a real time waster. I've tried all the tool bar and menu options I could find for displaying something like codes and none come close to what WP does. In response to tml in Comment 2. I have donated every year for several years to LO to help continue their work, even though I use WP and QPro for >90% of my jobs. Anyone working to break monopolies and providing free software gets my support. Does that buy me some attention;-)?
This is a very good idea. We need to make Libreoffice a cut above OpenOffice and MS Office. This would be a great place to start.
To Robin, Word processors should be written for everyone, "Stylists" and authors alike. Whining about a feature designed to be useful for those who aren't like you, but who use the same product is counterproductive. "Reveal Codes" is a feature for literary artists, such as myself, and since the word processor is one of the best tools for us to use, we need features like this. I am saying I agree with you 100%. This is a needed feature in LibreOffice for anyone who relies on sharing the written word.
*** Bug 122682 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I would just like to put a comment/clarification here, although I suspect there will be others who understand the technical factors far better than me. My understanding of the WordPerfect file format, and/or the way the application handled managing a document being edited, is that the file is a "streaming data" format (if that is the correct term). A code/format gets activated, and is in effect until it is deactivated. Formatting codes could be nested as well. The idea of the "reveal codes" function was/is to show those embedded formatting codes within the stream. Seems to me the WP formatting concept is basically like a "markup language", and from what I remember of using WP, they looked very much like HTML and XML. And since the OpenDocument format is also a streaming data format, it would seem to logically lend itself to a reveal codes editor. This is, of course, presuming that WP was in fact using a stream of data for their document format, and not using some long-since-lost hack to make it look that way.
James, You are confusing file format with editing. WP's reveal codes works even in non-native formats like MS's .doc.
(In reply to James E. LaBarre from comment #18) I think you should use present tense instead of past tense when writing about WordPerfect because WordPerfect for Windows is still evolving: apparently Corel released WordPerfect Office X9 (19) only last year.
I would love to resolve this as WONTFIX but I can't handle the shitstorm. Anybody with more clout?
Other implementation flavor in MS Word: https://legalofficeguru.com/so-you-miss-reveal-codes-in-wordperfect/ Tor, why do you want close an enhancement request? Maybe there is somebody someday who works on that or something similar.
Changing bug priority to high since the number of people in CC is higher than 20
If you are not familiar with WordPerfect and "Reveal Codes", have a look at this video giving an example of its use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUZSamyLBXo
I am a new user, but it appears this has been done? I have been using View-Formatting Marks to see Formatting. It does not show changes to Fonts, but Word Perfect did not do that either.
Great, let's resolve as fixed then.
View -> Formatting Marks is useful but it comes nowhere close to replacing Reveal Codes.
It's Friday. Let's close this as WONTFIX.
I am so looking forward to the ensuing shitstorm. So sue me.
(In reply to Tor Lillqvist from comment #29) > I am so looking forward to the ensuing shitstorm. So sue me. As Thomas Lendo said in comment 22: "Tor, why do you want close an enhancement request? Maybe there is somebody someday who works on that or something similar."
An issue with 24 subscribers + 4 dupes, shouldn't be closed without some discussion. I see no none here, the dev list, or ESC.
Oh well, I tried.
Can I just add that this is something that I've wished for in LO for years as well? On occasions, I've hit problems with LO (and OO before it) where something flaky has caused odd non-repeatable issues to arise. To fix them I've often just deleted the affected text and re-typed it. One time, I unzipped the document file to look at the raw source of the document and found a complete mess of styles where the nesting of start/end tags had somehow been corrupted. I seem to remember seeing lots of occurrences where styles were turned on and off multiple times but had no content within the style tags. I'm sure that with the LO equivalent of Reveal Codes, this would have shown EXACTLY what the underlying issue was and, if I could have edited it out via the reveal codes edit mode, then this would have negated the need for retyping. I would suggest that those (e.g. Tor) trying to close this down with a WONTFIX really have no understanding of what the issue is in the first place. Having such a facility would not only satisfy those who have (quite rightly) been asking for it for too many years, but it could also help with debugging for those programmers investigating issues around styling. /my 2 cents worth
Resolved with bug 38194