Shortcomings

[TBotNik]

All,

LibreOffice has so many shortcomings over MS-Office that as a writer/author, I had to buy a Windows Laptop with MS-Office to run ny books through, before I can send/submit them to the publisher. Some of the shortcomings are:

1. Default Margins: All legal, military and other document, by law, must have 0.5" margins on all sides unless bound and then the bound margin is always 0.75". I have never been able to successfully set these even when using published HOWTOs on this matter,

2. Default Font: I all my documents I use Arial 10pt font. I have never been able to successfully set these even when using published HOWTOs on this matter,

3.Style Formats: When trying to permently set the H1, H2, H3, etc Fonts, sizes and numbering i cannot get them to set permanently. I need 2 styles or fomats:

A. 1.0 Title (size 16pt) for H1, 1.1 Title (size 14pt) for H2. 1.1.n Title (size 12pt) for H3+.

B. The 2nd style must repeat the first but with year.month (alway 4=Apr) then the numbers as in style 1. The second style is for legal document I have to write, so have to be precise.

Again I have never been able to successfully set these even when using published HOWTOs on this matter,

4. Footer Page Numbering: Though-out all my documents, which use document paragraph and page numbering the page numbers keep changing, so do not stay in consistant order making any referencing rediculous. Also again I have never been able to successfully set these even when using published HOWTOs on this matter,

I have many more gripes about LO, but this is a start. If anyone knows how to properly set these so that like in MS-Office I can simply call the “STYLE” and all formatting is correct, I will greatly appreciate this, as I’m beyound the frustation point, which led to my purchase of the Windows machine a year ago.

As you see, even this input space is corrupt as it does not properly address item #3 and therefore item #4 is improperly label #3

Cheers!

TBNK

.

[Ratslinger]

Hello,

Item #3 is incorrect because of incorrect input and not corruption. S/B 3. **... and not 3.**...

[anon73440385]

Use a tool that fits your needs.

[Lupp]

LibreOffice has a powerful concept of styles and templates. It may be necessary, however, to not just read through some 15-line howtos to get the grip on this all.
You will find all you need in chapters 9 and 10 (8 in advance I would suggest) of the recently updated Writer guide. You can get it from here.

If there are actual shortcomings: There is the bugtracking on bugs.libreoffice.org where you also can file feature requests as so-called enhancement-bugs. Please learn first about how to use Writer, and report bugs and enhancment requests after serious consideration.

[ajlittoz]

You forgot also to mention a very important shortcoming: “Writer is not Word”. This means underlying principles are different from Word ones. You must accept to think differently: things may be done differently in various areas. Every tool has its own usage method (you don’t drive screws with a hammer). If you can’t or don’t want, keep with Word.

After you have read the Writer guide as rightfully suggested by @Lupp, you can address your “shortcomings”.

The base strategy is to define your own template. A template is just an “ordinary” document in which you have set all your custom settings (paragraph, character and page styles – margins are part of the latter). When saving, you use the specific menu command to tell Writer it is now a template. You can flag it as “default”, so that next time you open Writer, it is used as a basis for the new document.

1. Default margins

   Adjust them in the page style(s). In case your documents use only one type of page, do it on Default Style page style.

2. Default font

   This can be done outside the style/template machinery and will be always set (unless overridden by a template). Go to Tools>Options, LibreOffice Writer>Basic Fonts (Western). The items of interest for you are Default (Arial 10pt) and Heading (Arial, don’t bother to set size but you can if you wish).

3. Style Formats (headings)

   Paragraph styles dedicated to headings are called (surprisingly) Heading 1 to Heading 10 (not H1-H3 which is rather reminiscent of HTML styling). Customise the Fonts tab (font face has already been set by the default font parameter for Heading).

   Numbering characteristics are tuned in Tools>Chapter Numbering.

   I don’t understand the specification of style B. If the idea is to have something like 2020.1.(Chap)5.2., there are two options:

   • This is the only numbering sequence in the document and year.month is fixed (not changing) in the document, add the string “2020.1” as a separator before in Tools>Chapter Numbering, Numbering parameters.

   • This (independent) sequence must coexist with the usual bare chapter numbering: this is advanced usage and the parameters are complex to set up (need to duplicate the Heading n to create another family and integrate this family in the heading machinery). If you really want to go that way, succeed first in the simple case and come back here for further help/information.

4. Footer page numbering

   Enable the footer in the page style(s). Then insert field Page Number in the footer.

When all these customisations have been made, save as a template. Your future documents will look like the template. Don’t hesitate to modify the template to fit your taste. When you reopen your template-based documents, they will be updated to reflect the latest template state.

My explanations are not an HOW TO. They can be understood only after reading the Guide and practising a bit with Writer.

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