Writing in sub-documents and in master.
It is the writing author who is not comfortable with working on whole work in one piece, even if complete work has only up to 40 pages and for experienced writer it would be a pin nut. The decision to take master document is not the question of available technical means.
I wonder if following layout, the master document level, has a chance to work yet if any shortcomings/open issues should be known when one considers to have this layout.
At few point sub-documents will interchange with master-level text. In master document a content only that kind it is very hard or impossible to manage it in sub-documents. Below the block of whole work placed in master in shown order.
TOC
master – few indices/lists, of tables, figures and so on
one .odt per chapter
master – bibliography created by external tool
one dedicated .odt – couple of appendices
master – list of abbreviations/acronyms
Page numbering restarts at beginning of TOC, block of chapters, bibliography. Page numbering style changes also at these 3 spots.
Front matter will prepend above work by means external to Writer yet after master export to PDF.
Writer Guide 7.6 had been consulted regarding topics: master documents, table of contents, indices, cross-references, etc.
Sub-documents have header and footer enabled. One field per each + header border in certain form is enabled. Should master take over this layout from sub-documents, or does one need to craft those in master from scratch ?
At the moment only header border appears in master, the two fields not.
Text section precedes in master the subs inserted (due to TOC and few further lists). Do all styles/all formatting assigned to this text section stop automatically as soon as a sub-document starts? On another side I check subs and master for style possible overwrites.
Can the possible direct formatting in text section master level override formatting of pages the master takes from subs?
Master and all subs are derived from one custom template. The update-link template to children doesn’t work. I try to keep style definitions on both sides (template and its children) in sync manually - just for the case one day the styles update-link should work again.
I guess, it is crucial for success in troubleshooting to always make update of master every time a modification gets tried out (to see if any improvement results).
EDIT
My own experience shows that master have to craft headers and footers on its own, even if sub-documents do it. I have however no idea if this is the expected behavior.
My master document reached certain level of maturity.
There are things which work well.
There are also spots which don’t work as expected.
Work well:
TOC on master first two pages.
Master – the block of pages with TOC and few tables of objects uses page numbering scheme i, ii, iii and starts from i.
Table of tables and table of diagrams follow TOC
As next the chapters come, page numbering scheme 1, 2, 3, …
This block starts with page number 1.
Each chapter starts on new page.
Block of appendices follows last chapter, page numbering schema I, II, III. First page in this block of pages has page number I.
Each appendix starts on new page.
Do not work
Let the number of first chapter heading to read “1”
All chapters, except for the first one, use Heading 1 (Writer stock-paragraph style). Style uses page break, however with first page number setting unchecked.
For first chapter to start with page number 1 a dedicated heading style was created - a Heading 1 derivative. It is almost identical with Heading 1, the only exception is that page break uses page number start 1.
In this regard I don’t understand Writer Guide 7.6, chapter 16 “Master Documents”, sub-chapter “Restarting page numbering”.
It provides the well-known hint: “Look on the Outline & List tab (Figure 13) of this dialog to see what outline level Heading 1 is assigned to. Usually this will be Outline level: Level 1. The level cannot be changed here because it has been set in Tools > Heading Numbering.”
This is how my master looks like.
Few lines later - step 3 - it states:
" On the Outline & List tab, set the Outline level to Level 1 (Figure 15). This ensures that the heading will appear in the Table of Contents along with the other chapter headings. The List Style for this heading is No List, as it was not assigned an outline level through the Heading Numbering dialog"
This is the point problematic for my master - chapter 1 heading gets no numbering. Also in TOC it acts without number. That is not the expected form. Chapter 1 heading should have numbering as all other chapters.
What am I doing wrong?
Two tables of objects start on same page where TOC ends. However the first table should start on new page. I do it by placing manual page break at beginning of first table heading. It gets however lost on every update of master document.
Master + sub-documents is advanced usage of Writer. If you don’t fully master “normal” usage of Writer (single-file document), you’ll get into trouble with master (as obviously shown by your questions/remarks).
The Master feature allows you to have different layout in the sub-documents and the merged master when you tweak your styles. This is very handy in specific contexts but turns out very puzzling if you aren’t methodic and strict enough. You must pay a deep and very careful attention to your styling. Master + sub-docs are very very very sensitive to direct formatting divergence.
Consequently, even if you don’t like it, stay “single-file” for a 40-page document.
Don’t add conceptual difficulty until you fully understand Writer formatting. It is obvious you still need a lot of practice on “simple” documents before you complicate your life.
This is yet another example of the difficulties. Tools>Heading Numbering is intended to control “outline” numbering in a centralised way. This works on a set of paragraph style, a single one per level. Having several styles per level is possible but, once again, this is advanced usage and you must fully understand where you’re heading to. The risk is to cause your new heading_1 to be excluded from TOC, to mess up heading numbering or ending up with an unnumbered heading (your present case).
And the master context makes things more daunting (you may get different results in the sub-document and in the master due to discrepancies in styles, despite the common template).
Simplify your life with a single “ordinary” document. You’ll still have room for errors.
This should not happen. Perhaps you erase your manual break when you modify your master. Such a break is a property of the table. It should be specified in the Text Flow settings of the table. This would avoid the issue.
Probably nothing special. You need to study carefully available Writer documentation and experiment on throw-away files when you hit a difficulty. Absolutely no office application (by any provider) is “intuitive”. Workflow is inherited from past experience. When you switch to another application, you must imperatively be humble enough to admit you should restart from scratch as if you never used document processors.
Writer is feature-rich to allow very complex tasks. However it is easy for simple tasks. All you have to do is to accept and understand the styles concept. As long as you don’t mix styling and direct formatting, you don’t create conflicts (solved by built-in precedence rules). As a beginner, be exclusively style or full direct-formatting. The latter case is acceptable for 1- or 2-page documents but becomes unmanageable beyond 5 pages.
The ball is on your side.
My best suggestion is: stop working on you real valuable document. Take time to experiment with Writer on small example cases, even if you have a deadline for the main document. The skill you’ll gain with your experiments will largely outweigh the time spent in learning.
