Book editing, Title and "Heading 1" (chapter title) fields in footers (or headers), LEFT, RIGHT

[jepe1]

Hi,

I have come up with this scenario already, and I guess, many others have too…
cause this is how a book is laid out…

my question was how to go about it when you have a master document,
and several sub documents (which is the absolute basic scenario)

the document structure goes like this:

we have chapters, each having a Heading 1 chapter title...

and we have sections... 
one section has several chapters...

we have "left and right pages"... (in the page style)
and headers / footers have to be allowed to be different...

and we have the Libreoffice Writer guide, which is edited in this very basic way…
so, what can possible prevent us from being happy?

I’ll tell you:
when you do this thing with the Chapter title (Heading 1 / H1), it will work correctly,
in the footer it will appear as you expect it…

however, when you do this with the Title,
it won’t work…

I mean, it works, but the field will have the value of the document’s “Title” property…
(document properties / title)
that is, it doesn’t come from a heading,
it comes from the “gut” of the document…
it’s “hardcoded” into it… so to speak…

why is this a problem?

As far as see, it is a problem because in a master document ONLY ONE “Title” can exist…
which means, that the “section title” cannot be displayed in a header or footer per section…
only the document title can be displayed, and the chapter title (Heading 1)

this means that a banally traditional book layout cannot be achieved

…

when I’ve first brought this up here, I was told that it was possible…
and I found the Libreoffice Writer guide, a master document having many sections…
exactly what I’m talking about - the very basic book structure…

and I saw that it was possible, and I slept well

But now that I was trying to actually do this, it didn’t work…
and now I look at the Writer guide again, and guess what, it doesn’t work there either…
for example:

throughout chapter 6., this should be in the left footer:
"Chapter 6, Formatting Pages: Advanced"
the Title of the section…
but instead, you find there “LibreOffice 7.3 Writer Guide”, i.e. the Title of the master document… the title of the book, not the section…

I didn’t notice this cause I opened the linked document, and I saw that it’s Title appeared in the left footer nicely… and I thought that that was it!

…
so my question is: is there a not toooo ugly workaround?

sorry for the length!

Peter

[ajlittoz]

The flaw in your book structure is to think that chapters are necessarily associated with Heading 1. The Heading n hierarchy is flexible enough to accommodate any organisation you choose.

I understand from your description that your book is broken up into:

• “section”
  Though this word is usually understood as a group of chapters, it is source of confusion both in Word where it covers a specific “geometry” for pages and in Writer where it designates a part of a page with a different number of columns. I prefer to use word “part” for a group of chapter to reduce ambiguity.
  • chapter
    • sub-chapter

Then, to achieve your goal, associate part (“section”) to level 1, chapter to level 2, sub-chapter to level 3, …

It is quite easy to correct your existing chapters both in the master (if some are directly written in there) and in sub-documents with the Navigator (F5 if not already visible). Click on a chapter heading to select it and use either the arrows in the Navigator toolbar or Ctrl+right arrow to increase level (and Ctrl+left arrow) to decrease level. All subdivisions have their level also increased to respect the level hierarchy.

Then you can use Heading 1 to style your part/“section” heading.

Of course, you must adjust Tools>Chapter Numbering to suppress number at level 1 and start numbering from level 2.

[jepe1]

Hi, thank you very much!

this was in my mind the “tooo dirty” solution… but it is actually clean and easy…
I’m just against calling heading 2 something that is heading 1

but I can see that this actually works…
this is a not too difficult workaround

HOWEVER…

I’ll choose another workaround… which I’ve found just a minute ago (from 2018)

which was suggested by you

it is the “one page style per chapter rule”…
I only have 8… so I feel great already!

so, would you be so kind as to paste this link in your answer as an alternative?
then there would be two beautifully viable solution in one comment / post

thanks for both!!!
_
so, for the future readers:
here is my no. 1 favorite solution
by ajlittoz:

Headers from sub-documents in master-document

@Thomé: headers are a property of page style; consequently you need one page style per header (usually you have a new header when you start a new chapter, which comes down to the “one page style per chapter” rule) unless you can generate your header from dynamic insertion, i.e. with fields and cross-references, in which case a single page style may be used over many chapters. To have your custom “sub-doc page style” used by the master doc, make sure it has an original name, not found in master. …

the second favorite is in the 1st comment

[ajlittoz]

The fact that you link your comment to my other answer has automatically added a back link there. I didn’t know this feature of the site engine. Cool!

[jepe1]

so, this thread has two solutions…
this is why I mark this last short comment of yours as solution,
noting for the future reader that she or he can read both…
_
#1 the one in ajlittoz’s firsts comment, suggesting to demote (“degrade”) the headings by one level throughout all documents…
_
#2 and the linked solution: "the one page style per section rule"

_

[jepe1]

actually, ajlittoz,

would you be so kind as to outline how exactly to use the one page style per section (chapter) method?

[ajlittoz]

A page style formats a sequence of pages delimited by a “boundary”. This boundary is set by Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break. The dialog which pops up allows you to choose the page style active after the break, and optionally the starting page number.

The selected page style must exist. Therefore your first task is to create the page styles. As you mentioned you have 8 chapters, you create 8 page styles. Each one will have its own header and footer.

But this is not really user-friendly as it is completely manual (no possible automation). If you’re looking for a smarter method, you can do so with a single page style for your chapters, provided the header can be generated from fields, such as chapter title or number. In this case, the page break to create the “boundary” can be set in the Text Flow tab of the paragraph style used to format whatever data begins your chapter. Usually this is Heading 1 (or perhaps Heading 2 in your case). Since the page break is integrated in the paragraph style, you no longer insert it manually; it is implicit with the use of Heading x.

[jepe1]

thank you for this explanation!
I would never have found out that manual page breaks are they key here…

I will try this tomorrow, and report back

thank you!