Converting outline to Harvard Format

Question

Converting outline to Harvard Format

I've got a rather long outline, originally created in OmiOutliner. Over time I have reproduced that document in Pages '09 using the Pages' Classic Outline template.

I wanted to convert this to a Harvard outline and thought it would be a simple matter of importing the styles from the Harvard Outline template and making sure to check "Replace Duplicates" when prompted. But nothing behaves as expected: rather than having been assigned the various Harvard levels: I. A, 1. a), etc., each heading level was given a Roman Numeral: I, II, III, etc., which is only appropriate for Heading 1. Each heading level, though, does seem to retain the proper indent associated with its heading level.

The Harvard Outline Template works as expected if I'm creating a new document, but not when trying to change outline formats.

Has anyone come across this?? Is there a simple trick I'm missing?

Thank you for any light than can be shed upon this.

Christopher

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jan 10, 2010 1:24 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 10, 2010 3:09 PM in response to silvermoonbeam

Chris

Try selecting the text that you want to set the list style to and +double clicking+ the appropriate List Style in the Style Drawer.

This should force the style onto the list and clear any exceptions.

Peter

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Answer 2

Jan 11, 2010 5:57 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

Thank you, Peter.

The double-clicking didn't work…

I think I've fixed it by manually adjusting the indent level in the List Tab of the Text Inspector. For some off reason, every level of the outline was set at 1. As I increased it to the appropriate number (2 for Heading 2, 3 for Heading 3, and so on), the correct number/letter showed up in my document. Perhaps there was a problem with my source document.

Christopher

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2010 11:37 AM in response to silvermoonbeam

Or Pagessimply didn't recognise the levels.

Something worth testing, when I find time. There is a whole vague area of compatibility across applications and formats. It would be useful to detail the things that work and those that don't.

It is something I would need help from constant users of other software.

I will create a compatibility section in my TipsnTricks forum:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?p=225&mforum=iworktips ntrick#225

If you can detail this and any other incompatibilities, I will chase it up there.

Peter

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Answer 4

Jan 11, 2010 2:24 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Hi, Peter,

I originally created my outline in OmniOutliner Pro. It's a very long document that includes a lot of text. I was disappointed to discover that Pages couldn't open .opml files so I exported the .oo3 file as an .rtf.

I opened the .rtf in Pages and manually assigned styles in the Classic Outline template. This is the document into which I tried to import styles from the Harvard Outline template, with the results I mentioned above.

I went back and looked at my Classic Outline document (I did the style import on a copy of it) and noticed that while there were visible indents in Outline View, and varying text styles for the different Heading levels, the Indent Level in the List tab of Text Inspector always read "1." Then again, all Heading Levels of a fresh copy of the Classic Outline template are also set at "1."

I guess I don't understand the role of the Indent Level control with outlines, but setting them to match the heading level made each heading display the correct Harvard prefix: I. A. 1. a) etc. It does seem to me, though, that this should happen automatically when importing styles.

Christopher

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Answer 5

Jan 11, 2010 3:14 PM in response to silvermoonbeam

Chris

Well the problem is that you had to export the file as an .rtf. This stripped off a lot of the outlining information.

.rtf files don't have a way of storing the outline levels leaving just the formatting that I presume goes with them. Even there, Pages does not seem to have as comprehensive support for .rtf as Word and the Word clones do.

Peter

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