Actually, the two posting were, in this case, an accident. I posted my
question to the General group, not realizing that there was a more specific
group targeted on the topic of my question. As it turns out, virtually no
one addressed the issue on the more focused newsgroup, but rather has
addressed themselves more to the 'General' question. This seems
counter-intuitive to me, but in this case I am glad that fate served to have
place the question in both groups as the feedback has been helpful.
As to the Mass Market issue, I'm afraid that I cannot concede your point.
The functionality we are discussing is functionality which previously
existed, and has been lost. In any case, it is the role of developers to
provide as much functionality as possible within an application as is
possible within the limits of resources and practicality. If there is a
literary resource that authoritatively dictates that an outline should be no
more than 9 levels deep, then please cite it. Otherwise, I would consider
that limit to be whatever limit had been available in previous versions of
Word. The fact that this specific application of a numbered outline was
focused on one particular and unique requirement does nothing to mitigate the
argument that there are no doubt many other 'mass market' applications of
numbered outlines that would require the ability to go beyond 9 levels. The
purpose of software is to enable users, not limit them.
I would also like to express my appreciation to the newsgroup police who,
while having nothing useful to contribute toward actually solving this issue,
were nonetheless diligent in pointing out my transgressions. I apologize
most profusely to all those who were so deeply offended and shall have my
meal card stamped €śNo Dessert€ť immediately.
Thanks!
F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer
"Daiya Mitchell" wrote:
I fully appreciate the points made here, but perhaps Word is not the best
tool for your complex needs.
Because it's not designed to appeal to a narrow and specialized market,
almost by definition. You might want to present the view to your bosses that
you are doing something very particular and being limited to mass-market
software is making your job more difficult.
Anyhow, a reply to one of your multi-posts pointed you he
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...ering/msg/d6ba
1d023c888b81?dmode=source-
Which gives a workaround for 18 levels, and possibly offers a way to work
out more.
Multi-post, by the way, means to post separately messages to several groups,
making it difficult to go back and find the answers, and raising the chances
that people will waste their time giving you answers you've already received
elsewhere. It's considered rude in newsgroups, plus it's inefficient.
DM
Graham,
I would have to disagree with you that an outline 9 0r more levels deep
would be incomprehensible. I would think that it would be very much
dependent upon the intent of the document and its intended document. In the
particular case I am attempting to document the architecture of an object
oriented software module by creating an outline of pseudopodia. (This to be
accompanied by UML diagrams developed in Visio.) The logic of this
particular module easily goes to more than 20 levels deep, and this is not a
particularly complicated module. To an audience of fellow Software
Engineers, I can assure you that the resulting pseudopodia outline would be
completely comprehensible.
In any case, I believe that setting the limit to 9 levels is somewhat
arbitrary, and I believe that Microsoft should not place limits upon users
within its applications unless there is a resource limitation or documented
requirement to do so. Given how buggy the numbered outline seems to be in
Word, perhaps it is in fact a resource limitation that forces the limit to be
9. It seems to me that earlier versions of the MS Word supported more, if
not unlimited, levels when bullets and numbers could be set to multilevel
prior to the advent of the specific numbered outline option. (The numbered
outline may have been available in previous versions, but if it was it was
not the default as it is today; the simple bulleted format was the default
which could be customized to multiple levels.)
If I am correct on the above, then this would seem to be a case of lost
functionality. (A major, "your going to hell" sin in my industry.) In any
case, if Word is not going to support more than 9 levels, why then does
customization dialog present the level selection in a scrollable list control
with all 9 levels visible in the list? The scrollbar is disabled because
there is nothing to scroll to, but it is nonetheless there. If there was not
the intent to support more levels, why then allow the scrollbar to be present
al all! It is very confusing to the user in that it gives the impression that
there may be a circumstance when the scroll bar may be active. (Believe me,
I have spent the better part of a morning looking for just such a
circumstance.) If the Microsoft Word development team did not intend there
to ever be more than 9 levels, then it would have been a simple matter
through code to prevent the listbox from displaying a vertical scroll bar!
(I believe the vertical scrollbar is a holdover from previous versions where
more than 9 levels were supported.)
So, my question still stands... why does MS Word not support more than 9
levels for a numbered outline list? Is it by accident, necessity (a resource
or design limitation), or design (there is actually some literary authority
out there that dictates the number of levels within a numbered outline shall
be 9, and 9 shall be the number of levels within a numbered outline! 10 is
right out!) (My apologies to Monty Python.)
Thanks!
F. James Little
Sr Software Engineer
"Graham Mayor" wrote:
Outlines more than four levels are difficult to read and the province of
Government documents. A document with more than 9 levels would be
incomprehensible. What is your thinking here?
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
F. James Little wrote:
Is there any way to add more levels to a outline numbered list?