LO Writer 24.2.7.2 Ubuntu
This document has been converted online from the original PDF, firstly to .doc then opened and converted to .odt in Writer.
As expected the formatting is not perfect (neither was the formatting of the original pdf!).
Is there any way I can change the formatting of the section headers (the ones with white on black)
And how are the columns formatted?
PS the document is not copyrighted and I am editing it for my own use).
Olachan_0002.odt (59.8 KB)
The conversion tool produced a bad-structured document.
It created sections where obviously you needed tables (bi-lingual dictionary if I guess correctly), where you can vertically “synchronise” terms between the columns.
It used Text boxes (drawing objects, not text) for your white-on-black “headings”. This may be valid under Word but wrong under Writer because it prevents you from styling nicely the corresponding text.
The tool also erroneously decided to style Heading n paragraph which are not headings. And, worst, direct formatting appeared nearly everywhere.
And, every page ended up as a style of its own with hard page breaks in between. Consequently your text does not flow smoothly from one page to the next but is jailed inside one (with the unfriendly effect of creating a new nearly empty page if you extend text and it overflows).
My best advice is: restart from scratch by pasting unformatted text into a new document. This should be easy now that you have useable text already collected in paragraphs (instead of simple lines as would be in a PDF).
Thanks. I tried several conversion tools, most of which were even worse!
Yes I will probably have to restart from scratch, but first there may some things I can do to make it easier.
For example the text boxes you mention cannot be selected like you can an ordinary text box and transfer over when I paste into a new document. After much clicking I found that they can be selected and deleted by using >Form >Design.
I’m also pasting the paragraphs into tables, as they seem easier to line up than in column mode.
I have never used Forms before, and they seem to be useful.
This is not a solution to initial question and should have been posted as Comment.
Form Design is intended to create fillable form, not a sequential-reading document. But text boxes can also be created in usual document for “spot” decoration. Don’t try to copy/paste them because you’ll keep the idiosyncrasy. Instead, select the text itself and transfer it.
Text boxes can be deleted more simply: select them (resizing handles appear all around) and press Del.
I have (I think) now removed the Solution tick mark from my earlier post.
I did it much as you advised. After converting text to tables, I had to reorganise the tables manually to match the translations. I doubt if there is any easier way to do it.
I did learn quite a bit though!
Shall we assume it solved?
Thanks for your help.
Olachan_final.odt (37.3 KB)
You got it, but there is still a lot of formatting work to do.
Remove the remaining frame. Apparently it is there only to draw a border around this part of the document. You can achieve it playing on the border attributes of the concerned paragraphs (set indents to the same values and enable border merge).
You also have forcing fixe line height/spacing (e.g. 0.58cm in one of the headings) and this causes clipping of the characters.
Thought I was done! But might as well do the job properly.
I copied the text, deleted the frame, then pasted into the page. The frame is quite useful for the title page though, as it can be moved about easily.
I fixed the headings by using Proportional spacing The headings were not created as headings, just a continuation of text. Is there an advantage of creating headings?
I notice that the headroom above the tallest letters in the headings is not consistent. Example in p2 “Tart” no headroom whereas on p5 “Cur di” there is more headroom. Could it be something to do with the font design? I can make more headroom by inserting a line above the heading but it’s not consistent.
Olachan (McCoy)_final_mod.odt (40.0 KB)
The problem in your document is the omnipresent direct formatting. The conversion tool tried to keep as precisely as possible the location of text the same as in the original copy. It did so by “manually” adjusting spacing everywhere. It ended up with such nonsensical values as 0.04cm for a Before text indent, 117% line spacing and other “funny” distances. It also altered font horizontal scaling or character kerning rather erratically.
You attempted to “fix” erratic spacing adding empty paragraph. You only increase the mess and create conditions for future trouble. (A well-behaved document contains absolutely no empty paragraphs.)
Globally the whole document is inconsistent formatting-wise. You should customise built-in styles (where relevant, like Body Text) and/or add your own styles, restyle methodically the whole text and get rid of direct formatting with Ctl+M.
Most of the paragraphs styled Heading n are not headings at all, e.g. those in the tables. You should think deeply about your document structure. Headings are a way to subdivide the document into logically homogeneous parts. Headings are intended to be collected in a TOC (a TOC is not mandatory, anyway).
To see if your headings make sense, generate a TOC (get rid of it after checking if you have no use for it). If TOC contents is not consistent (as is presently the case), your heading skeleton is bad. Restyle.
Apart from letters to Aunt Martha, it is always beneficial to organise your document around headings. This backbone is often called “outline”. Keeping only headings, you should get a pretty good idea about what your document talks about. Consider them as a kind of summary.
Your footers are horrible (once again a poisoned gift of the conversion tool). Built-in Footer paragraph style is configured such that one Tab positions at page center where you would insert the page number field, and a second Tab aligns text to right margin where you’d type your name. No need for the bunch of direct formatting and “alignment” with space characters.
Most documents i write or edit are only a few pages long and don’t need a TOC, so I doubt if headings are necessary. But I will revisit them next time I compose a long document.
The footers are my addition! The way I do them works ok for me, and don’t seem to cause any problems. I could make do with just insert as foelds the page numbering, and leave my own text out.
The before-text indent was my doing also, entered to keep them away from the left borders (which I ditched) of the tables.
Also the 117% line spacing was to give a bit more line spacing within the “header”. No particular reason for 117% in particular.
I added empty 2pt paragraph above a few “headers” in order to give more headspace (for the shading) above some words with uppercase characters. Proportional line spacing does this OK for some “headings” but in others the tops of the taller letters are right up against the top of the cell. I am still trying to find what settings are different. It is not the vertical alignment.
I also use empty paragraphs when I want to add a large space, eg when I want to put a few lines of text in the middle of a page. As in my Title page.
I did notice the kerning was inconsistent in a few cells and manually corrected them to 0.
Another thing I noticed was when I changed the text on the title page to a text box, it lost it’s shading. Shading is not available in text boxes. I suppose I could convert the text into an image and insert that. But is much easier just to have it as text and move it to the centre using empty spaces.
Time for me to give up on formatting this, though it has been most educational.
I take your earlier advice and cleared direct formatting., and started from scratch with body text style.
That brought me to Styles, which I have avoided up to now.
It remains to be seen if all my issues have been solved.