I have a document with many pictures, each having explanatory text in CAPTION style.
Each caption is set to CAPTION style via the Styles drop down menu (top left of OpenOffice window)
How can I generate a Table of Pictures with page references, i.e. next to each caption list page number where it appears?
Your description is ambiguous.
At best, edit your question and attach a sample file. That keeps helpers from guessing, and we are less dependent on a common understanding of terminology (which is easily confused).
VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE!
Your document is a .doc one. All features specific to Writer will not be translated correctly to M$ format. This means you’ll lose the “caption tagging” as soon as you convert and this tagging can’t be restored when reloading into Writer.
Save in native .odt format, edit in this format and export only the finished document to your external recipients if they require so. However, all your formatting is already polluted by the many in-out conversions done up to now.
If you accept to save in .odt, your future editing will be preserved but the existent are probably seriously damaged.
When you generate a table of figures, pictures, images, …, the important distinctive information is not the paragraph style of the caption (there are already several built-in variations) but the “counter” used to number the “caption”.
At time of Insert>Caption, you noticed a Category drop-down menu allowing to choose a numbering sequence. [None] is used to disable numbering. Other choices are Illustration, Text, Table, Figure, Drawing, … You can even create your own categories.
Insert>TOC & Index>TOC, Index or Bibliography is the command to create a table of items flagged with a “counter”. In Type tab, select Table of Figures from the Type drop-down menu. In Category, select the “counter” you used to number your “captions”. Choose the other settings to your liking.
Nota: it is always possible to add a numbering if you didn’t do it in the first place with Insert>Field>More Fields, Variables tab, Type Number range and choosing the adequate “counter”.
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Thank you.
Your explanation is very helpful. Thank you.
I was able to caption pictures and create a Table of Pictures.
The caption is in Illustration paragraph style and the text is right under the picture with no space above it.
I modified the Illustration paragraph style to force white space between the picture and the caption.
That had no effect
How can I assure there is some space?
This is a completely different question. It depends on how your pictures are anchored and how you created the caption. The easy case is when it was made with Insert>Caption. The paragraph style doesn’t control space between a picture (more generally a frame) and its text. There are several factors to consider depending on anchor mode.
Thank you again.
For the time being found a workaround for space between picture and caption.
Of course the paragraph style (Illustration Index 1) can be redefined.
In addition based on your suggestion I plan to see how anchoring options can achieve the spacing between pictures and captions
This means your pictures are anchored As character. Instead of Shift+Enter, use simply Enter. This will not include a line break in what is captured for the illustration index and thus no need to manually edit. If this gives you too large a spacing, change the paragraph style for the picture paragraph. You’ll thus be able to tune spacing separately from the caption paragraph.
No mater what type of anchoring I select the inserted caption is right below the picture, without any spacing
Insert>Caption changes the structure of the picture integration in the document by creating extra frames. You can see that either with various View options (I highly recommend to always enable these clues) or, in a less detailed way, in the Navigator.
You have to play either with additional paragraph mark or frame positioning (more comfortably done with a frame style once you are satisfied, but frame styles don’t exist in .doc, so you’ll again be faced with formatting difficulties with back-and-forth conversions).
Will try this.
Thank you
Captioning should be simplified. A space above is required in most cases.
Captioning can be simplified only when there is an agreement on how it should be formatted. There are as many layouts as users, therefore no shared specification about it. Writer provides the tools needed for any fancy formatting. YOU have to coerce what you think is a caption into your preferred format.
As an aside remark, a caption is a semantic role assigned to a paragraph. Morphologically, there is no difference between a caption and a discourse paragraph. Writer has no means to guess the human-meaningful role of paragraphs. Even the style name is irrelevant because you can customize it at will.
Fact is that libreOffice DID make a default formatting choice: no space between pictures and caption.
Found a way to force spacing via border padding. Is there way to define that as default for all pictures?
Yes define a frame style and apply it to all your pictures. Or customize the frame style used by default. The built-in one depends on the nature of the “object” inserted, so check in the side style pane which one is used in your case.
As usual, if direct formatting has been applied, it has precedence over the style. Beware!
Thank you for the “Beware!”
Tried the following to set frame default:
F11 > Clicked on 3d icon on top > Modified "Frame" to have 0.10" padding
Added images and padding in such frames is still 0"
You may have modified the wrong style. To be sure, display the list of frame styles (the 3rd icon from left) and click on an image. The applied frame style will be highlighted. If you want your padding around the composite image+caption, select the outer frame to see which style is applied.
As always, View>Text Boundaries and View>Formatting Marks are your friends to better see the exact limits of objects.
Did as suggested. GRAPHICS was highlighted on Styles window when I clicked on an inserted image.
The default padding size is not automatically applied.
No matter; I have 2 options.
a) set padding for each picture
b) carriage return before caption text and in index delete resulting blank line
OR … maybe live with no space above caption.
In any case I thank you VERY MUCH for all your help and patience.
How can I apply a check mark to the answers?
To solve this issue (captioned image) and make things easy, I anchor the image As character (so that it becomes a big character following text flow) and add a paragraph break Enter between image and caption. I apply a dedicated user paragraph style to the image paragraph. As such, I can now tune the “geometry” of the image (and all of them because the same style is applied to all) through the paragraph style.
To mark an answer, tick the gray check mark (only once even if seemingly nothing happens).