[quote user="Rendres"]It would be great if the next line would also automatically be bulleted, and potentially the bulleted list only be deactivated when you hit enter a second time to insert a clear line. This handling, found in the word processing programmes ...[/quote]
Maybe, but that's not the right way to use such programs. That is to say, most modern wp programs allow one to handle "formatting" as styles rather than as formatting. Accordingly, rather than changing the appearance in an ad hoc manner as one goes from a formatting bar one is able to highlight particular areas of the text, open a style palette, and apply a style with a semantically meaningful content to that text. IOW, modern wp documents are more like modern HTML documents and less like old-fashioned "tag soup" documents that mix content and appearance in an indiscriminate manner.
This has the advantage that not only can one embed what amounts to structural information--not "large" but "heading'; not "bullet" but "list type x, y, or z"; not "italic" but "emphasize"; and so on--one can also, importantly, change the way in which a style is formatted in the styles palette and have the change cascade right through a document in one go. This is one of the main benefits of new XML formats such as OASIS Open Document. (One simply can't do this with primitive formats like .rtf.)
However, what word-processing programs do, and had best do, is one thing and what email clients do, and had best do, is another. FWIW, Apple Mail in OS X does allow one to use an "Insert bulleted list" command and to leave the list with a double-press of the "Enter" key just as you'd like. However, that said, I doubt many people make much use of it.
<p>[quote user="Rendres"]It would be great if the next line would also automatically be bulleted, and potentially the bulleted list only be deactivated when you hit enter a second time to insert a clear line. This handling, found in the word processing programmes ...[/quote]</p><p> </p><p>Maybe, but that's not the right way to use such programs. That is to say, most modern wp programs allow one to handle "formatting" as styles rather than as formatting. Accordingly, rather than changing the appearance in an [I]ad hoc[/I] manner as one goes from a formatting bar one is able to highlight particular areas of the text, open a style palette, and apply a style with a semantically meaningful content to that text. IOW, modern wp documents are more like modern HTML documents and less like old-fashioned "tag soup" documents that mix content and appearance in an indiscriminate manner.</p><p>This has the advantage that not only can one embed what amounts to [I]structural[/I] information--not "large" but "heading'; not "bullet" but "list type x, y, or z"; not "italic" but "emphasize"; and so on--one can also, importantly, change the way in which a style is formatted in the styles palette and have the change cascade right through a document in one go. This is one of the main benefits of new XML formats such as [URL=http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office]OASIS Open Document[/URL]. (One simply can't do this with primitive formats like .rtf.)</p><p>However, what word-processing programs do, and had best do, is one thing and what email clients do, and had best do, is another. FWIW, Apple Mail in OS X does allow one to use an "Insert bulleted list" command and to leave the list with a double-press of the "Enter" key just as you'd like. However, that said, I doubt many people make much use of it.</p>