Number of levels for a Numbered Outline List

[Guest]

The number of levels available for a numbered outline list should be not be
limited to 9. Ideally the number of available levels should ultimately be up
to the user, but I am sure that this would present a resource or managability
limitation. In any case, I would think that the limit shouldn't be any less
than 18.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...3dcaa6&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Doug Robbins]

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for people to agree with you.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Guest]

You obviously disagree. Why?

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for people to agree with you.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi F. James,

Because with an average of 5 items under each heading, 9 levels give you
about two million numbered items.

If you find that the nine levels don't suffice, the hierarchical structure
of your document is likely poor.

Also, those levels should help readers to orient themselves. With more than
nine levels, I can't imagine any reader that can follow the hierarchy.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Guest]

Klaus,

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you. While it is true the 5 raised
to the power of 9 does equal 1,953,125, I believe this argument to be
specious in that you are suggesting that the average numbered outline would
actually contain an average of 5 items each. While that may be a reasonable
level to assume at the upper or even middle levels, I believe that number
would fall off sharply as you reach lower level. It would of course have a
lot to do with the structure of your outline, and clearly you could have a
structure that could push the application to its limits. If indeed the issue
is question of available resources, then perhaps I would be willing to
concede the point. To date, however, the only resource limitation that I
have been able to find from Microsoft is a limitation of 256 list template
styles and 2,304 formatting combinations. (256 templates * 9 levels)

As to your second observation that the hierarchical structure of my document
“is likely poorâ€, I would have to say that in my defense one has to consider
the subject matter being dealt with and that there likely could be a great
many circumstances where a deep and complex hierarchical structure is both
necessary and also completely comprehensible. The situation I am dealing
with is just such a case. In my case I am attempted to document an object
oriented programming algorithm through pseudopodia. An Example of this might
be:

1. If A then:
a. Instantiate Child Object
b. Insert Child Object into database
c. Add Child object to Parent Collection.
d. For each Child object in Parent Collection Do:
i. Set Property A to “a valueâ€
ii. If Property B = “Some Value†then:
1. Instantiate Sibling Object
2. Insert Sibling object into
to database
3. Add Sibling Object to
Sibling Collection
4. If Property W = Truen Then:
a. For each
Sibling Object In Sibling Collection:

i. If Property Z is True then:

1. Set reference to Grandparent Object.

ii. Set Property X to “Some

Valueâ€.

e. Do something

else with
Child

Object.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi F. James,

Sorry: Maybe the last post came across a bit harsh... The "you" wasn't meant
personally.

Outline numbering was meant for outlines, and even large books rarely need 4
levels.
In your case, you try to use outline numbering to document some given, deep
hierarchy. That's probably not what the developers had in mind, although I
can understand very well that you'd like to use outline numbering for that
purpose.
I think you got a reference to ListNum fields in another thread? Not quite
100% automatic, admittedly.

The reason for much of the negativity you saw in my (and probably also
Doug's) response is due to the fact that the current implementation of
outline numbering is so bad that making it more complicated seems
unpalatable.

Word currently saves 9 list levels for even most simple lists, and I think
I've seen cases where it even saved one list template with 9 levels for each
level of an outline.
The list gallery is a nightmare, and you have to follow some rigorous,
non-intuitive methods to get outline numbering working at all.

I hope that outline numbering will get a radical renovation some time. In
that case, it might be good if developers would take into consideration some
models that don't put any fixed limit on the number of levels.

With that in mind, I'll even vote for your suggestion, hoping that someone
from Microsoft will read it if it gets enough votes!

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Klaus

I'll vote for this one, too.

I don't want to read a document with a heading numbered
13.3.2.5.1.2(a)(i)(iii) -- and that's only 9 levels. But I have seen cases
where I needed something like:

Chapter 1 History of Transport
1. Air transport
1.1 Jet planes
1.1.1 Boeing

Table 1
(a) A footnote under Table 1
Data source: A History of Flight

Figure 1
(a) A footnote under Figure 1
Figure source: Something else

That's not an unreasonable layout. But it's 10 levels, so it's not doable.
And if there were appendixes with roughly the same structure, and we relied
on the usual method of hijacking heading levels for the appendixes, then I'd
need 20 levels.

On the other hand, with the current incarnation of numbering, I can't begin
to imagine the messes that might be created if we had more than 9 levels!

Shauna

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Guest]

Klaus,

I completely concur with your observation that any modification to increase
the number of available levels in Numbered Outline Lists should be a part of
an overall larger effort to rework the underlying architecture of Numbered
Outline Lists in particular and Bullets and Numbering in general.

Thanks!

F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer