Moving right along: So I’m starting a fresh document. I want to create a subheading, the text being centered and the font big. Now, do I create a Style? Do I use an existing style and/or do I or should I modify an existing style? Perhaps double spaces before and after can be included in the style? I’m understanding that ‘direct formatting’ isn’t the best way, so styles, here I come. There’s three different ‘Heading’ styles already on offer but they all seem about the same. Can I steal one of them? I want to do it right from the getgo.
Before designing your own styles, start using built-in ones.
Remember that, from an author’s point of view, applying a style is not a directive to set such or such font face, size, colour or italic. It is an annotation about the significance you allocate to paragraphs, words or pages.
In a second step (don’t take “second” as chronological ordering), you convey your reader the differences in significance with typographical and geometric differences (margins, indents, font, weight, colour, …).
So, when starting with styles, your main resources are Body TExt for main topic and the various Heading n pour headings (“titles”), where n=1 for chapters, 2 for subchapters, etc.
It is obvious that factory settings don’t fit all users preferences. Don’t hesitate to modify built-in styles to your tastes.
Built-in styles are organised hierarchically so that modifying key styles propagates to dependent styles. For example, Heading is the “hat” style for all Heading n and some others which are all related to titling. Setting a font face in Heading will be effective on all these so that it is not necessary to modify them individually.
Pay special attention to Default Paragraph Style (DFS). It is the ultimate ancestor of all others. What you set there impacts all others (unless the modified setting is overridden = explicitly modified – in a descendant). Consequently, never use for any text in your document because the temptation to tune it for this text is too big with very adverse consequences on the rest of the document.
Indeed. The paragraph box model includes spacing on all four sides. But naming differs a bit. Vertically, it is called spacing before and spacing after; horizontally, indents before text and after text, i.e. respectively left and right in left-to-right scripts like European languages.
These settings are located in the Indents & Spacing tab.
Last, the platinum rule:
The whole style machinery is available only when you work native (.odt documents). If you work DOCX, only paragraph styles are available; everything else is direct formatting.
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Thanks, that’s a start.
The whole style machinery is available only when you work native (.odt documents).
Yeah. .odt seems not to be catching on – too bad – and I found out the hard way that whereas I can save as .pdf I can’t edit. So it seems that only final export can be in .pdf, all working must be done in .odf (or .odt, not sure of the difference). Seems Windows serfs all recoil in horror at .odf, tho they seem mostly to cope with .pdf. I want to get with the culture as much as I can. BTW I completely understand as to styles being essentially logical.
Is there a way to preview all the various styles? Can I go window shopping? Or do I just have to experiment?
PDF is not meant to be edited. It is a frozen display format for archival.
ODF is the name of the standard: Open Document Format. .odt is the file extension for Open Document Text. Other LO file extensions are ott = Open Template Text, ods = Open Document Sheet, ots Open Template Sheet, odg = Open Document Graphics, etc.
Enable the style side pane (F11) and tick the Show previews box. It will not show indents and spacings, nor tabs but already gives an idea about typographical attributes.
That view is very nice. Can’t show spacing naturally, but it’s all you could ask for.
K, now first experiment: My paragraphs are not indenting on the first line in the new doc, tho they are in my converted doc. I thought I found the place to edit that: Format > Paragraph … but is seems to be a ‘direct format’ thingie, not a change in the overall style.
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Ah! Got it: F11 > Default Paragraph Style > Edit Style > First Line. Bingo, the whole doc changes. Yes, styles are my friend. Gotta get it right.
Can I view formatting codes? Like, I just bolded something, if I wanted to cancel that later, could I find the code and kill it? WP thinking I know.
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I see the icon for bold turn tan if I move the cursor into bolded text, very nice, now how to kill?
Styles are more complex and powerful than simple formatting codes. Formatting in Writer operates in 3 layers, independent from each other (regarding their range over text), with precedence rule direct formatting (DF) > character style > paragraph style.
If you come from Word or WP, it is likely that your documents were originally formatted paragraph styles + DF. Don’t overlook the value of character styles. They’re as much your friends as paragraph’s (and even more than you think). For a start, replace italic by Emphasis and bold by Strong Emphasis. You can then change the look of all emphasised text from the character style, as you did for the first line indent.
You can add character style over your present text but don’t forget to clear the sticky overriding DF (otherwise it will still be there and take precedence).
The feature to display styling information is called Spotlight. You can enable it from the style side pane, separately for paragraph and character. DF can be revealed only from meu Format>Spotlight>Character Direct Formatting. Note that this wording is lying: you can also see paragraph DF.
A more technical formatting monitor is provide in the side pane after pressing the Style Inspector icon. But it is less user-friendly than Spotlight.
Rodger all that. Now how do I delete? I see a little ‘df’ flag over the bolding, it seems to suggest it’s deleteable but it doesn’t … tho I’m sure it’s possible.
replace italic by Emphasis and bold by Strong Emphasis.
Yup, I know exactly what you’re getting at. We add logic to the doc, but how that logic is displayed is another matter. I know that I’m going to want to avoid DF as much as possible. This is all a bit overwhelming.
df = Direct Formatting. To clear, select the DF’ed range (highlighted with gray background; gray is only used for DF) and Ctl+M.
Paragraph DF is flagged with hatched lines over the paragraph style highlight colour.
Ctrl+M it is. Ok, many thanks, I’m at least off the ground.