How do you do Header Style numbering

English
#1

LibreOffice 6.3.1.2 (x64)

Win7/10 -x64

For all Header lines I do the following:

  1. Type in text and change style to Headerx
  2. Right-click->Paragraph->Outline & Numbering->Numbering 123->Edit Style->Outline->1.1


    What I expect to see is

    1 Investing for Retirement

    1.1 Retirement

    1.2 Spending

    1.2.1 Planned Expenses


    What I actually see is

    1 Investing for Retirement

    1.1 Retirement

    1.1 Spending

    1.1.1 Planned Expenses


    And I can’t change the outline number to get the correct values. Does anyone know how this thing works?


    As a little aside, modifying the Header Style is not persistent. That is, modifying it (after step 2 above) causes a local change but trying to modify it again shows the default value. The ‘new’ values are not persistent.


    And then there is the double gotha’. In paragraph after step 2 above, reentering the paragraph pop-up in order to edit the outline stye you have select “Numbering 123” again.
#2

You’re messing up everything!

Heading n are already preset for chapter numbering, except that numbering is not enabled (because some document may use unnumbered headings).

The “counter” for headings is Tools>Chapter Numbering. When you right-click on a heading and change the counter for Numbering 123, you change it only for this heading (direct formatting). You end up with two numbering sequences. I assume you did that on “Spending” or “Retirement” and the result is consistent.

Rule #1: don’t fiddle with the numbering style unless you know what you’re doing; Chapter Numbering is dedicated to headings.

Though not directly related to your problem, when you customise list styles (those controlling numbering, accessed from the fifth little icon in the style side-pane toolbar), don’t use the Bullets, Numbering Style, Outline and Graphics tabs once you have begun to customise the style. They change values in the Position and Options tabs and ruin your customisation.

Rule #2: use only the Position and Options tabs in list styles.

To enable numbering, open Tools>Chapter Numbering, Numbering tab. To configure simultaneously all levels, select 1-10. Menu Number controls the style of numbering. By default, None tells to not number. Choose 1, 2, 3 for a numeric numbering.

Rule #3: heading numbering is controlled from Tools>Chapter Numbering.

When you right-click in text to change anything, you only apply a local change (called direct formatting) without modifying the underlying style(s) (paragraph, character, list or even page). Therefore, if you modify again, you’ll still see the styles as they are configured, without the local changes because they live in a different layer.

Rule #4: to get persistent changes, modify styles in the styles side-pane, not in the text.

And finally:

Golden rule: download and read the free user guide from the official site, notably the chapter about styles.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

3 Likes
How to use heading numbers with dynamically hierarchical headings?
#3

From the bottom of my shriveled old heart, thank you. Your solution worked, as you well knew it would. But, sigh, I have a complaint. LIbreOffice is my only office resource because I like it, not because of it’s price.

In this case I am confused at the implementation . There are three contradictory ways to insert numbers in headers (paragraph, style, and tools->Chapter Numbering), and their usage conflicts. Is there any need for this to occur? Wouldn’t it be better to use the context (Headerx) to allow only one means to do numbering, and to reject the rest by default, or indicate by message it is wrong? And the name “Chapter Numbering” is confusing. I don’t have book chapters, I have section headers, so to me the terminology is deceptive (conceals rather than reveals). This is not a slam but I think that the way things are done is confusing and should be changed.

Before I asked the question I tried to read the book. I didn’t think to look at styles so couldn’t find an answer.

#4

Umm. I’m trying to say the question is answered and to give you an upvote on your excellent response. ONly, I can’t find the ✓ or ^. Not your issue but I just thought to tell yoy I tried.

#5

I don’t see 3 ways, there’s only one: style with Heading n. If you go through Format>Paragraph, you create some form of dreaded direct formatting which will mess up the outline mechanism and probably pollute TOC collection.

Tools>Chapter Numbering is the customising device. Yes, you must use it to enable numbering because it is set to None by default. But, per se, it is not a command to number any paragraph.

About terminology: in older releases, Chapter numbering was names Outline numbering. It was changed (between 4.x and 5.x ?) because some users found it confusing. Ergonomics is a very difficult art because everybody is different with a different cultural background and education.

#6

The ✓ or ^ are the gray icons above and under the big 0 at top left of the answer. Click only once! It may take some time to turn green but refrain from clicking again because it will toggle back the setting.

#7

I admit that ergonomics is difficult but things should be more ‘intuitive’, a subjective term I know. But I stand by my statement that there appear to be three ways of doing the same thing. Your comments are absolutely accurate, but you are knowledgeable, I am not. When I look I see three seemingly different ways of evoking the same dialog. My assumption is a duplication of context, and a rather obscene word when this proves wrong. My thought is that unless the three are all legitimate, the software resrtict usage.


The other puzzler is that there is a separation between the header style and outline numbering. Why isn’t Tools->Chapter Numbering in the Header Style to be used for it’s rightful purpose. Instead, there is a Chapter Numbering in the Header Style which is different that Tools->. I think that this is really confusing. If there is a distinction between the two usages, then that distinction should be placed in the style and not separated.

#8

It took me a very long time to understand the logic for numbering. Chapter numbering is a special usage of the list feature. A list needs two independent properties: a paragraph style for general layout and a “list” style to define a counter for the sequence. Surprisingly, Writer as shipped does not associate a list style to paragraph styles intended for lists (List n and Numbering n) and sets the outline styles Heading n to “no-numbering” state with their implicit Chapter Numbering list style being configured as None sequence.

All counters (list style) are multi-level. This usually doesn’t matter for standard lists but all Heading n are associated with the same Chapter Numbering counter. Then, it wouldn’t make sense to tune the numbering in specific Heading n because it affects all levels.

Terminology again: heading and header are different things. The latter is the area at top of page where you can put a title or page number, repeated on every page.

#9

Thanks for the terminology. Much appreciated.

My thought that Outline Numbering is a more inclusive terminology than Chapter Numbering.

You brought up the issue of reading the manual. My concern is that if I have to read the manual to understand a concept then this defeats the idea of intuitive design, admitting that at some point reading the manual is a really good idea. In this case my expectations were that all issues related to Headings would be related to o(1) the Heading Style and/or (2) the context pop-up you get when you right click over a Heading. I would never guess that I had to use Tools->Chapter Numbering. This is counter-intuitive and remote from any Heading Style, and although it might be programaticly sound, users are not programmers.

The ‘fact’ that outline numbering is a global attribute of using a Heading should be taken care of in the Heading Styles. Global or not, this is were I think it belongs.

#10

Right, outline attribute is more general than chapter numbering. It is not limited to Heading n. You can enlarge the set of “outline” styles by giving a level in Outline & Numbering tab. This is a different menu from the Numbering style. This means extra styles can be unnumbered while Heading n are (or vice versa). The extra styles may also be numbered in a different sequence than the “chapters” (use case: appendices are alphabetically numbered, chapters numerically).

It then makes sense to call the settings Chapter Numbering because this “counter” addresses only the Heading n numbering. It is reserved for this style family and can’t be used for any else.

I don’t know which arrangement of menus/style definition layout is best considering the power of the feature. Human factors specialists should study the case.

Intuition is a matter of education: it depends on what you’ve learned and consider as universal. When basics are different, you must accept that and adapt.

#11

I’ll tell you what disturbs me. (1) settings relevant to Headings are not co-located with the Heading Styles, (2) context sensitive pop-ups are invalid for Headings, (3) multiple numbering formats, each serving a different purpose, (4) The use of Tools-> is clearly inappropriate and counter-intuitive, (5) Chapter Numbering is deceptive.

To put Chapter Numbering in anything but the Heading Style makes little sense.Since there is a different Chapter Numbering Style, I think Styles should be reworked. There is no intuitive grasp to direct a user to how to use Styles.

The context menu (right-click on a Heading → Paragrpah) allows Outline & Numbering, which has a Chapter Numbering, to be inserted but this is not the correct one to use. At the best one can say that this is confusing since there is an expectation that the context is appropriate to the Heading, and yet, it is not.

I feel that the Styles and context menu’s should be re-engineered. This is a technical not pejorative.

#12

Made a test: right-click>Bullets & Numbering>Bullets & Numbering opens the correct dialog on Heading n. All other choices must be rejected because they will remove the selected paragraph from chapter numbering and transform it into a list item though it stays in the outline structure.

More generally, confusion in formatting comes from the imperative need to reconcile two ways of using Writer.

The first one may called “immediate effect” where you specify the intended effect (bold, italic, font face & size, …). This could be considered “intuitive” because people are not used in thinking of a document as a structured semantic piece of information. It is also the historical usage, ever since the mechanical typewriter era. Styles have little added value here, apart from paragraph styles mainly to define indents and spacing (and this is what m$ Word offers basically).

(to be continued …)

#13

(continued)

The second one emphasizes semantic significance of document. It needs more initial work to mark up contents You don’t request typographic effects but you tell the selected sequence is “important”, “foreign word”, “computer example”, “quotation”, “colloquial”, “title”, “chapter heading”, “legal item”, … Separately, you specify how these mark-ups are rendered. Styles are the basic tools for this: they decouple meaning from aspect. Paragraph styles are not enough, you need character, page, frame, list styles. You would also need table style but present implementation is just a template, not a style. Even if it is not perfect (e.g. you can apply only one character style to a sequence), this allows a writer to ignore all formatting issues while typing. You don’t need context menu. You only apply styles.

Mixing both approaches leads to difficulties because they are somewhat contradictory. The second one is more challenging but opens greater possibilities.

#14

Unfortunately, @ajlittoz, the solution that you have provided doesn’t work for my documentation, because it solely applies to headings 1 to 10, which excludes Heading “0” – the master/default heading style.

Consequently, do you know of a solution that allows LO Writer to dynamically number the stylistically hierarchically equivalent headings based upon either a non-stylistic manual designation or, better yet, their indentation?

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I’m trying to convert a document from markdown to a more versatile format, and one of the problems with the previous document was that I couldn’t use markdown headers because I frequently used more than the maximum depth of headers (not least because I always use the web view rather than page view).

#15

@rokejulianlockhart I think your problem is a different question. It’d be better to ask your own as it probably needs a long answer. In this new question, mention your OS name, LO version and your usual save format.
Explain your use of “Heading 0” (to which kind of data you apply it).
Having more than 10 heading levels is a structural error. It betrays an insufficient introspection about the significance of your text. I think (without information at this step) that you mix headings which make the document outline with lists which define “atomic” blocks of data.
Waiting for your new question.

#16

Thanks. Done so.

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