I have a document with a lonnng, multi-page list of ideas for articles in a new blog, ideas that listed in no particular order and relate to various topics. I would like to be able to see all the mentions of a particular topic across the document. Any suggestions on how to do that?
The solution can be a combination of templates, styles and a database collecting keywords grouped by ideas or themes.
Tanslated from Eine Funktion wie diese für Autoren - #6 by Villeroy
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Ein Datenbankdokument Writers_Highlighter.odb (31.1 KB) to be registered via Tools>Options>Base>Databases as “Writers_Highlighter”.
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A Python module distributed as an installer-document Writers_Highlighter.odt
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Doc template with 4 user-defined character templates and with a user-defined property “WH Profile” (see menu:File>Properties…): Writers_Highlighter.ott (8.9 KB)
3.1. Test doc with dummy text “Lorem Ipsum”: wh_lorem_ipsum.odt (33.5 KB)
3.2. Test doc with English dummy text: wh_english.odt (33.4 KB)
3.3. Test doc with German dummy text: wh_german.odt (36.8 KB)
After installing the Python module and registering the database, open the test documents and call macro: Tools>Macros>Run… “My Macros”>pyWriter>Writers_Highlighter>Highlight
Depending on the type of document, specified by the user-defined property, different words are highlighted according to the document’s profile name (File>Properies…) and the style name specified in the database.
The “Undo” macro in the same moudile resets the same words back to char style “Standard”.
Setup:
Open the database.
In the “Dictionaries” form you enter pairs of phrases and names of von character styles. These pairs can be assigned to different profiles. I used “Lorem”, “German” and “English” for my test documents.
For a new Writer document, you need a template with all the character style entered into the database for the respective profile.
In the data source window (Writer Ctrl-Shift-F4) you find all the names in tables “UDS” (user defined styles) and in “WH_Profiles” (names of existing profiles).
This relates to “semantic tagging”.
When a document is created, its author has specific ideas about the value of sentences and paragraphs. Paragraphs are basic units of significance in well-structured documents: they target a single idea or point.
You can introduce slight nuances of significance inside a paragraph but not change dramatically its “value”. In this case, you should start a new paragraph.
Writer provides a handy feature to “annotate” your text: styles.
You can define as many styles as you want: comment, explanation, definition, warning, important, citation, trademark, irony, humour, … Writer has built-in paragraph styles for the main discourse (the one related to the document title) as Body Text and for the outline (chapter, subchapter, …) as Heading 1 to 10. It also has character styles for intra-paragraph variations such as Emphasis, Strong Emphasis or Source Text.
All you have to do is to think about which styles you need, create them if not existing, and apply them to paragraph or words.
When you want to highlight such or such “topic”, you configure the correspond style(s) to give them a distinctive look or layout. You can do this permanently by saving your style modification (just saving the document) or temporarily (by not saving the changes).
Thank you, guys.
From your answers, I see there’s not a simple way to 1) insert tags from a list throughout a document and then 2) see all the places a particular tag has been inserted. The suggested work-arounds seem clumsy and not very productive.
There is a section in the Help manual about Smart Tags that refers to extensions that define them. Does such an extension exist?
My suggestion is a one-time setup adding a new feature based on existing ones. Then you can keep multiple highlighting lists for different purposes and use your personalized setup easily.
I solved the problem using AutoHotKey. Downloaded a script that pops up a drop-down menu when a hot key combination is pressed. I loaded my tags into the script, and now, ctrl-shift-l lets me insert a tag where I want in my document.