Styling predates the Internet - Microsoft Word 1.0 for MS-DOS had style sheets. WordPerfect 5.0 introduced styles on that side. Hierarchically structured text documents with headers, paragraphs etc. are even older: IBM Generalized Markup Language began development in 1969.
Lack of tooling for hierarchical structure manipulation is the mark of aiming for the lowest common denominator - casuals who edit short documents one-off.
Microsoft Word Outline Mode is life. My pet feature request: outline mode - with a ticket opened to Libreoffice since 2011, preceded by an Openoffice feature request from 2002. Probably won't ever happen.
Introducing new UX concepts is always hard, but I'd suggest that most people would understand and appreciate the advantages rather quickly. Everyone knows the pain of manual styling.
Comments
You and I think like this, because we worked on/for the Internet. Unfortunately, other people who use these tools don't think like that.
Styling predates the Internet - Microsoft Word 1.0 for MS-DOS had style sheets. WordPerfect 5.0 introduced styles on that side. Hierarchically structured text documents with headers, paragraphs etc. are even older: IBM Generalized Markup Language began development in 1969.
Lack of tooling for hierarchical structure manipulation is the mark of aiming for the lowest common denominator - casuals who edit short documents one-off.
Microsoft Word Outline Mode is life. My pet feature request: outline mode - with a ticket opened to Libreoffice since 2011, preceded by an Openoffice feature request from 2002. Probably won't ever happen.
Introducing new UX concepts is always hard, but I'd suggest that most people would understand and appreciate the advantages rather quickly. Everyone knows the pain of manual styling.