I like the way styles are handled in Maple and how easy they are to apply to other docs. I have created a default style doc that has all the styles listed by name and formatted by the name of the style. That way, I can see what the style looks like, and it is easy to apply a given style to a new document.

Style listbox is not sorted by alpha, so the new user must go strolling around looking for the desired style.

Style "as-found" font and size are barely visible on my system (in fact, I missed seeing them several times as I first looked at the style dialog), and other characteristics are not shown when the style is Modified. It might be better to have the current font displayed more clearly and highlighted in the list below; ditto with size. Other style characteristics should be filled in or indicated as appropriate. The reason for this can be found by changing the style for 2D Inert Output: change the font, and the font color also changes. That's because the dialog doesn't capture the current setting, but applies the default color Black --- even though the user takes no action to change the font color.

I can't modify the paragraph style for Text...and /it/ seems to be linked to the Normal style. So I must leave the Normal style alone and create another "Normal" style (I created a paragraph style called Body) so that the Text style /doesn't/ change. In particular, I want my Body text intented on the first line and not the Text (at this point). It may be that I will eventually see no need to have a Text style that is separate from what I now consider Normal or Body. At any rate, it appears that Normal and Text have a link that should be severed. As I tinker further with styles, it appears that 2D * styles, Maple Input, and others are also linked to the Normal style, making the Normal style less than useful. Even though I can see having the Text style, as the default, indented on the first line, I don't see why that should affect all those other styles, and, at any rate, Text doesn't permit font changes.

The color selector popup for style color doesn't have an indicator for accepting the changes. I eventually clicked outside the dialog and got the change implemented. Help is no help.

It might be worth considering having styles be "based" on some other style. For example, Heading X could be based on my choice of another style, say, Normal. Then when I change the Normal font to Georgia, the Heading X font would also change. Otherwise, changing the look and feel of a document with 30+ styles, most of which are related, is tedious. If this is implemented, then it should work the same as word processors; i,e., changes from the base style are recorded with the style. In that way, if the user changes the base style from Arial to TNR, the fonts of child styles would change, too, but not any changes from the base style, such as font size, Italic, etc.

And the Apply Style Set dialog opens on My Documents each time, but I never store stuff there. So how about having it open either where it last opened or setting an Option that says where I expect to find my files, and have it look there. I like both ideas.

~R~