A new version of the Underground PHP and Oracle Manual coming soon
I know this is nothing to do with PHP or Oracle, but something that's been bugging me for a while and I've just found the answer to it.
I'm working on the 1.3 version of the Underground PHP and Oracle Manual that Chris Jones and myself have been writing over the last year. I'm writing it in MS Word. I used to be a technical writer many years ago and I'm used to working with long, complex documents, using the appropriate tools. This time I'm using MS Word. It is just awful for this type of job.
One thing that was driving me mad is that I couldn't figure out how to remove paragraph or character styles. Most of the time I could just change them to another style, but sometimes they wouldn't budge. After some research, I found out that to totally remove a paragraph style, change it to Normal, then to the new style you need. Who'd'a thunk?
A similarly strange method is required for character styles. You need to select it and then hit Ctr + Spacebar. That removes it and you can apply another one.
This has been a thorn in my side for the last two releases of this book. Hopefully I can spend some time reformatting it so each chapter looks a little more consistent now I've worked out how to do it.
Moral of the story ... don't use Word for anything other than a fax!
Now if anyone can tell me how to get the bookmarks and links working from a Word master document to Acrobat, I'll send you a special present.
If you hadn't worked it out from this blog, I'm working on version 1.3 of The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual. So in a long and roundabout way what I'm really saying is stay tuned for more news on the upcoming release of the new and improved version of this book.
