Thanks for explaining all that, especially the clear explanation of direct formatting.
Is there an extension which will distil a document down to a set of minimum styles?
E.g. define a single style for all text of a specific set of properties (Font, size, style), e.g. define an EmphasisTR12 style for all TimesRoman italic 12pt?
Or I suppose I could analyse the XML to work this out myself.
I imagine the reason Writer creates a new style each time you make some text italic (which is great ergonomics, a single key stroke or button press), is just in case the user wants each piece of text they directly set to italic a possibly different italic? (I’m trying to guess why Writer would create a new style rather than reuse an existing one.)
In any case, I’ll definitely try out what you’ve described here.
I confess there would be a massive amount of work in finding and changing all directly formatted italics to use a style.
But you’ve given me heaps of great information, thank you!