Change default style in Libre Draw after .pdf import

English
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#1

Hey,

I have a problem with the default style in Libre Draw.

But first, my goal is to open a .pdf document in Libre Draw and have the default fontsize for a textbox be 10 pt.

I have already have tried changing the default template for new documents with a different “Default Drawing Style” but the changes don’t effect .pdf documents.
I tried opening the .pdf selecting Draw as “open with other Application” and opening a new Draw document with the changed Style and the opening the .pdf from inside Draw.
Both times the fontsize reverted to the old standard.

How can I change that?

Any help is much appreciated!

Version: 7.3.6.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 30(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: de-DE (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.2
Calc: threaded

#2

I’m afraid you can’t do that.

You open a PDF in Draw as a graphical file made of many independent shapes, most of them being text boxes. PDF is not a TDF format. It is a “frozen” display format. All information used to create the document has been wiped out to leave only shapes positioned at absolute coordinates in the page. Even the paragraph structure has been destroyed. Lines can also be split into separate blocks of homogeneous formatting.

PDF not being a TDF format has no notion of styles. Consider all your shapes to be direct formatting. If you want to apply styles, you must first apply Draw styles to the text boxes and remove direct formatting.

Considering the effort, you’ll be better off reconstructing the document in Writer. Text can be copied and pasted, but remember to rebuild the paragraphs, removing the spurious end-of-paragraphs created by the process. Images can also be copied and pasted.

EDIT

New shapes are styled Default Drawing Styles. Customise this style before creating your new shapes (text boxes are only a special case of rectangles).

If you repeatedly do the same task , you may consider modifying the default Draw template to record your customisation.

#4

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense.
Luckily my use case is much easier, all i need to do is add text, think filling out a Worksheet for school.

The question is how do I change the default font size for new text boxes.

At the moment I have to change it in the draw style every time I open a new .pdf

Considering your explanation I will probably keep doing that.

#3

What you can do, maybe need some work if you have many pages.

Shapes (text frames) are imported with direct formatting for the text, which takes precedence over styles, so the “default drawing style” is not applied.

On the first sheet, Menu/Edit/Select All [Ctrl+A),
use Menu/Format/Clear direct formatting [Ctrl+M]
then the ‘Default drawing style’ gets applied.

Do so for every sheet. no option to select all sheets at once.

#5

Thanks, maybe that can help someone who has to do a lot more work than me.
See my comment above for a clarification on the question.

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