request: style names in text for "replace styles"

[FA1]

Something equivalent to Word's "style area" would make using Replace Styles much easier. (In Word, go to Prefs and set "style area width" to nonzero, at least in v. X). It shows the style name in the margin next to each paragraph. Or something similar, there must be a better way than trying to figure out what you're replacing by looking at the list of text attributes and overrides.

[joewiz]

I'd encourage you to make this into a poll so people who support it can vote for it... this will also give the Redlers an idea of how much support there is. See the sticky at the top of this subforum for sample poll questions.

[Mart°n]

Something equivalent to Word's "style area" would make using Replace Styles much easier. (In Word, go to Prefs and set "style area width" to nonzero, at least in v. X). It shows the style name in the margin next to each paragraph.

I don’t think that somethin like Word’s style area would be that helpful in Mellel. Because of Mellel’s fine grained style system, such a are would have to display Section-, Paragraph- & Character-Styles as well as the Character-Style variations. Even the approach to display all (or some) of those data in a way that could be helpful is condemned to fail (IMHO).

Or something similar, there must be a better way than trying to figure out what you're replacing by looking at the list of text attributes and overrides.

That’s more than true. But I would vote for the “somthing similar” thing.
I’ve asked myself why there may be a spartanic and not that helpful DOS-styled (like a PC-DOS text only operating system) interface within the Replace Styles dialogue box when we have the probably most advanced GUI-based wysiwyg operating system. In short: Why are there only the style’s details instead of a preview of the style and why couldn’t I see (or preview) the exact passage of the selected style.
Not only the position of the feature (nested under the File menu) but also the rest of the interface is a real bad thing which should be changed to be useful and found by the users.

An example could consist of a list with all the used styles, a optional preview (maybe with the details and overrides) and some buttons to apply different actions. If you now select one of the styles, you will see a preview (which is optional and shouldn’t be necessary at all) or Mellel will jump to the first piece of text that uses this style and highlight it in some way (or dim the rest of the text) so that could see immediately how those style looks and where it is used. Now that you could look at the thing, you could select a style to replace the current one. The replace thing should either work with a preview option (so that you have to hit o.k to apply it) or the undo option should be applicabable to this (or the drop down list with the replacement styles should have an entry “current style” so that you could experiment with a life preview on the real text without destroying something.

[FA1]

Why are there only the style’s details instead of a preview of the style and why couldn’t I see (or preview) the exact passage of the selected style.

Agreed, I think your idea is probably the way to go.

I just hope there's some improvement on the horizon, it's really much more difficult than it needs to be. A GUI like you describe would go a long way to make compatibility with Word easier.

[Shayne]

I can only concur. The Replace Styles menu is, at the moment, a very weak link. It is a nightmare to convert a document to Mellel styles, although a pleasure to work with it thereafter.

Shayne

[mkenney]

As for determining the styles applied to a particular passage of text, I would like something akin to the "Get Info" dialogue of OS X that could be invoked with a keyboard commad. One could also incorporate a GUI representation of the styles in such a dialogue. Perhaps the GUI representation would be at the top with a pane underneath that lists the various styles applied to the passage.