Re: [office] text:display-levels problem

[David Faure <faure@kde.org>]

On Monday 18 July 2005 14:55, David Faure wrote:
> This is again a case of something that KWord can save and reload, but OOo doesn't load,
> and I'm not sure if that's a OOo bug or me misinterpreting the specification.
> 
>     <text:list-style style:name="L2" style:display-name="Numbering Style for Head 2">
>       <text:list-level-style-number text:level="2" style:num-prefix="" style:num-suffix="." text:display-levels="2" style:num-format="1">
>         <style:list-level-properties fo:text-align="start"/>
>       </text:list-level-style-number>

Ah, Florian Reuter told me in private mail that this was due to no level=1 item in this list style.

The OpenDocument format is quite unflexible with this; a list style must define all levels
of numbering, which makes it difficult to mix-and-match. For instance if I wanted to
define that "Head 1" uses "A,B,C", and then two "Head 2 letters" and "Head 2 numbers"
paragraph styles for head 2 paragraphs, one with letter numbering and one with actual numbers.
It's not really possible to do that without creating two list-styles, all of which must define
all used levels, so the number format for "Head 1" has to be duplicated...

To illustrate what I mean:
1. Sales
  1.1. First heading 2
  1.2. Another heading 2
  1.A. Annex for Sales
  1.B. Another annex for Sales

This currently needs two list styles which both need to define the numbering for level-1.
Duplication is never good, and what if one wants "A.1." and "A.A" combinations too? ;)

Why not allow to define a single level in a list-style, and look up the list-style used by the 
heading of the previous levels (here the "Sales" heading) and use that number format?

This change would be compatible with the current spec since it would still be possible
to define all levels in a single list style, but it would allow more flexibility for the above
example (which can happen easily in applications where list styles are not document-wide 
objects with all depths defined together).

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).