Does LibreOffice Writer offer vertical text justification?

[thesun]

I have noticed that when I’m using the Widow/Orphan protection it does a good job of preventing lone words or lines at the top or bottom of a page. But it does this at the expense of the vertical justification. Is there a setting or method to (after a Widow/Orphan has been shifted to the proper location) then re-justify the page vertically so that the lines always fully fill the page?

Currently, the bottom of a page will lose a line or sometimes two, which means that there’s additional white space at the bottom of the page. I’d love to gently nudge the line-spacing so that the whole page is filled…can this be done with a tool or is my only option to direct format that part?

Thank you!

[ajlittoz]

No.

I think the reason is pages do not exist as primary objects in Writer. They are allocated on demand when a page is full (this includes the case of shifting lines as a consequence of widow/orphan management).

Page overflow is discovered when it happens but what is already laid out, remains as is.

I discourage you from any attempt to vertically justify your page: pages are consequences of text flow. Any edit prior to the page in scrutiny may change the location of the page break and all your tuning will be ruined.

Also there are two ways to justify pages: play with paragraph spacings (but this may leave white space at top and bottom) or with line spacing. The latter way implies to modify the paragraph styles, creating styles unique to a page and you end up with zillions single-use styles which is not the way of using Writer. In this case, better go for full direct formatting, causing, in this exceptional case, less difficulty than styles, but you lose style flexibility. Also, line spacing applies to a full paragraph; so, unless your paragraph start and end are synchronised with page breaks (how? this is not implemented in Writer because, once again, pages are consequences not causes), your fine-tuned line spacing for one page will badly interact with the previous and next ones.

Last but not least, any attempt will conflict with your desire to have a single content source for three editions (see your 258664/in-book-publishing-how-best-to-change-the-page-size-for-a-new-edition question.

What you request can be done in DTP (e.g. Scribus in FOSS or Quark XPress in proprietary software) but it becomes tiresome when the book has more than 10 pages.

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[thesun]

Thanks very much, yeah, this is what I suspected but just thought I’d ask. I’ve looked into Scribus but it’s really not the ideal tool, fine for brochure printing or image-heavy documents and so on, but very cumbersome for manuscripts. Overall, I’ve had no problems with LibreOffice for POD publishing needs, but I’ve been glad to find ways to make for an easier workflow.