When working with a large number of images it’s often a better idea to link images than to embed them into the document itself. This helps reduce document size and allows you to easily change or edit an inserted picture at a later point in time. However, so far I haven’t found a way to do this by default.
From what I can gather there are four distinct ways of inserting a local picture into an .odt document (actual menu entry names might differ):
- Drag and drop the image in question from a file manager
- Copy and paste the picture in a similar manner
- Insert it via a dedicated dialog: Insert → Picture → From file
- Create a new gallery theme and insert your pictures from there: Extras → Gallery → New theme → Search through files → Add all → OK → right click on image → Add
Out of these methods only the last two offer an option to link an image instead of embedding it:
- the insert dialog comes with a link checkbox that controls switching between embedded and linked images
- similarly with images in a gallery you can choose between adding images as a copy, i.e. embedding them, or as a link.
Unfortunately none of these methods appear to be capable of storing the previous setting. The respective link option has to be selected each time an image is inserted into the document. Both insertion methods are tedious to start with but this slows down the regular workflow even more.
That’s why I wonder:
- Is there a setting or configuration option that would allow us to choose between embedded and linked images for all the insertion methods above?
- If not, is there any way of linking an image with a drag-and-drop or copy-paste operation?
- For the two insertion methods that do support linking images, is there any way of storing the user setting across single images and sessions?
- If there currently is no no good method to do this, where and against which component can I file a bug report/feature request?
This question is based on this Q&A over at askubuntu.com.
