Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 74841
associate paragraph formatting with paragraph mark
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:38:00 UTC
In some other word processors, paragraph formatting is associated with the end of paragraph mark. In order to copy formatting to another paragraph, one may select the mark of the model paragraph, copy, select the mark of another paragraph, and paste. This is faster than creating a style, and one may not want to define a style every time they use any variation in a document. (Also, Writer does not make it easy to select paragraph marks. Double clicking behind the mark does not select it. Click and dragging left to right does not select it either.) So far I know, no way to copy paragraph formatting without defining a style in OO.
Sorry, meant to have enhancement selected, not defect.
Reassigned to requirements.
This particular problem is not just an enhancement request; it's a fundamental design flaw that has plagued OO.o from day one. Sad, but a large number of the issues tracked here are either a direct result of this design flaw or an indirect result of the hacks necessary to work around it. You can't select a paragraph, copy and paste it somewhere else and preserve its formatting sanely. Lots of operations that are simple x/c/v actions in other programs turn into arcane sequences of adding a sacrificial blank paragraph, doing the obvious thing, then removing the temporary paragraphs. The same selection under cut, copy, and paste, may behave differently depending on how the selection was made, all because the formatting of the paragraph is not stored in the paragraph mark (figuratively speaking of course). The whole "delete a P-mark and the leading para's format wins/backspace a P-mark and the trailing para's format wins" thing is... cute, but it's seriously flawed. Removing a P-mark should have one consistent consequence. Then a whole lot of other weird emergent problems simply evaporate, and a lot of special-case code can evaporate with it.