How do I modify the styles menus?

[jtreagan]

Using Libre Writer 7.1.1.2.

My problem is that I can’t handle clutter on my screen. (Please bear with me here. I’m dealing with a learning disability and the only workaround that works is to eliminate clutter on my screen.) Writer has a styles menu in the sidebar as well as a rather clumsy, though useful, menu on the Home menu ribbon. While no doubt many people find the stock styles that come with Libre useful, I do not, and, with only rare exception, do I use them. I make sure to give the custom styles I create unique names, but they are difficult to access simply because there are so many stock styles to sort through. It helped to use the Applied Styles menu option, but even then the few stock styles I have used are mixed in and the tiny menu in the Home ribbon doesn’t seem to have that option. What I would like to do is simply delete all the stock styles so that they don’t show up, ever. Can that be done?

A more real and workable solution would be for the developers to place all the stock styles in an “add/remove” menu. Then we could add, to the active style menus, the styles we want to show up for our use and ignore the rest of them, thus avoiding all the clutter. Even people who don’t deal with my particular learning disability should like that system.

[jtreagan]

Good thoughts @Hrbrgr & @ajlittoz. That “hide” feature may be just the ticket. I’ll give it a try and let you know, here, how it goes. Thanks! :>)

[Hrbrgr]

What I would like to do is simply delete all the stock styles so that they don’t show up, ever. Can that be done?

Most of the standard styles cannot be deleted. And that’s a good thing, because the styles are hierarchical and your self-made styles would lose their reference.

---

Workaround:
However, you can “Hide” most of the styles.

The hidden styles can then only be viewed at the bottom via the “Hidden styles” selection and shown again if required.

Can that help?

[ajlittoz]

Another approach would be to use the built-in styles (because their names hints at their usages for “semantic formatting” vs. “appearance formatting”) after customising them. Replacing the built-in styles while keeping all their useful property is a daunting task for beginners. Amongst others, I think of the Heading n hierarchy which confers an outline to your document and allows for automatic TOC construction. Substituting your own style collection needs to know the subtleties involved.

[anon87010807]

You can bind styles to keystrokes. By default, Heading 1 - Heading 5 are tied to Ctrl+1-5 and Text Body to Ctrl+0. You can use Ctrl+6-9 for a few more, and/or use other keystrokes. (It’s a tedious job, but you might ask somebody to do it for you.) Write those down, then you will hardly need the styles lists anymore. If you want to modify a style, first apply it to some text by pressing the key binding, then it will automatically be highlighted in the styles list when you open that.