How to WRITE and EDIT a book in Writer v.7.x ? (#1: concetanate PDFs or ...?)

English
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#1

hi,

unfortunately, despite the name “Writer”, there’s no chapter or sub-chapter
in the book “Writer guide” https://documentation.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/Documentation/en/WG71/WG71-WriterGuide.pdf

on how to write and edit a book…

my one practical question for now:

you have 10 documents, each starting with “heading 1”…
they are the chapter titles…

how can you make a book out of them?

Sure, you have to INSERT SECTIONS…

this concept is natural / cool

but then how do you make every chapter start with a BIG chapter title page, which is a RIGHT PAGE?

You’ll very probably need to have the chapter title on every LEFT PAGE’s top / header (as a field)
and the sub-chapter titles (heading 2) in every RIGHT PAGE’s header

::::::::::::::::::::::
the problem:

when you insert your sub documents as sections in the “master” document (i.e. main document – I see no reason to use “master document” when a normal document can be a master document too, and it makes way more sense like this)

the whole thing will become one document…
AND there will be only one first page… in the entire book…
while you would want every chapter to be a first page – a RIGHT page, with no header (no text in the header)

not to mention that the first couple of pages of the book, page 2, 3 and 4, and the Table of Contents will come before the actual book…

So, how should you go about it?

Right now it seems best to export chapters as individual PDF files, and concatenate them in the end… before sending to the print house…
(a horrible workflow-idea, I know, butchery)

any help would be great…

…
PS:
I know that I’ve asked this before, and that I’ve even got a good answer, but I think that is what I’ve been implementing while running into the walls that I described above…
so, that’s why I’m asking it “again” :slight_smile:

#3

It would have been nice if you had linked to your “good answer”.

Unless your book is very huge, let’s say more than 500 pages (somehow smaller if you have lots of images), the best way to manage it is to have a single file. This is the most user-friendly approach since you have to difficult technical issue with it.

Now if your separate documents are already written, your problem is to bind them together with a common TOC and other head or tail material.

For success, accurate vocabulary is needed to understand what is at stake and consequences of choices.

In Writer, a section is a part of a sequence of pages controlled by a page style. A section is used when you require a temporary change of page geometry without changing other non-geometric attributes such as margins, header and footer. Clearly, sections are not intended to bind “independent” material.

Inserting files into a document will duplicate contents. You’ll face two issues:

  • you now have two documents with the same contents; do you intend to maintain both? When you make a change in one, do you forward the change into the other?
  • formatting is copied into the receiving document; this means you may bump into consistency problems if you were not careful enough while writing your chapters.

Binding chapters together is most comfortably done with a master document containing cover, TOC, preface, head and tail material. Between head and tail material, you link the chapters as sub-documents. Since this is a link, contents is not duplicated.

However the consistency problem persists. The solution to it is to strictly adhere to styling method. Your documents are formatting only through styles with no direct formatting. In addition, to guarantee formatting consistency, store all your styles in a template file and base all documents (master and sub-documents) on this template. Refrain from making style tuning/modification outside the template!

Starting chapters on right page is only a matter of configuring *Heading 1* paragraph style.

Regarding your header, it’s likely you need to create a specific page style for your chapters (keeping Default Page Style for non-chapter parts where you don’t insert chapter heading in the header). And I think you need in fact three chapter page styles. You have the choice between:

  • a simplified method with a single user page style
    You request different headers for first, left and right pages in the Header tab of the style
  • an extended method with three explicit page styles you link through the Next field in the Organizer tab
    Here, your three styles need not share the same geometry. This allows more fancy layouts if so desired

A bit of warning about sub-chapter heading on right page: a Heading 2 must already exist when you enter the right page (or be the first paragraph in the page). Otherwise, Writer falls back to the current Heading 1 instead of returning an empty value.

1 Like
#5

this is absolutely new to me, and conflicts with my “model” (in my head)…

but let me read on your enlightening explanation…

inserting “text from file” is – as I see – the same as inserting a section, and then “removing the section” (which, oddly enough, leaves the text there, only kills the linkage)

SO, agreed, let’s move on to using the master document!

let’s say I want to insert 3 documents, 3 pages each, into a master document…
and I would like to have a page before each document, with the chapter title, and no header, no footer, and this page should be always a RIGHT PAGE…

You say:
“you link the chapters as sub-documents”

I’ve found this in the Guide Book (Writer 7):
"In the master view, the Navigator lists the
subdocuments and text sections, as shown on the right in Figure 365"

So, your concept about sections and subdocuments is verified :slight_smile:

Your suggestion, which – matched against my experiences – seems viable,
begins to be interesting to me from here:

this is what I see in the Writer Guide Book (v7) on CHAPTER TITLE pages, such as the Preface, or any Chapter, like page 14:

"Chapter 1
Introducing Writer"

This is exactly what I want. I mean, this is exactly what someone will want when editing a book.

what I don’t yet understand:

this is getting very close to the solution! :slight_smile:
Now I know that you could make it, so I only have to learn…

THANX, really!

PS:
I realized what you meant by posting the link to the solution… (of the previous attempt of mine to define this problem of mine :slight_smile: ) but it’s better to have a self containing page with the solution :slight_smile: (not to mention avoiding my previous blocks of text : ) )

#6

okay, I am learning!

Guide Book (Writer 7) page 111:

Using different page styles
As an example, we can use the First Page and Default Style page styles that come with
LibreOffice. Figure 109 shows what we want to happen: the first page is to be followed by the default page, and all the following pages are to be in the default page style.
To do this, open the Page Style dialog for the First Page style, go to the Organizer tab, and choose Default Style in the Next Style list (see Figure 110).

this is he key… (I suspect)
I’ll experiment with it and report back :slight_smile:

#7

Just a little hint:

Whenever the following page should look different or gets other functions (e.g. header/footer), you need another page style. But this one can be used several times. Many page styles are available by default (title, standard, right page, left page).
However, make sure that the correct (desired) style is selected in the page style at “Subsequent style”.
Information on this can be found, for example, in the Online help.
Enter page style in the search bar.

Here you can find an example of “How do I insert a landscape formatted page in a document where other pages are portrait formatted?”

1 Like
#9

wow! an entire world is opening up before my eyes :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

I can’t believe that in the past weeks I was thinking that maybe I’d have to export PDF files and concatenate them :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

I was superficial initially,
but the more I understand of it (the concept and the complexity), the more content I’ll find in the help / demo documents…

NOW I’d like to testify : creating a book in Libreoffice is absolutely possible, what’s more, Writer really is a dedicated software application, a pretty decent and intelligent one…
with a very-very intelligent reader-friendly documentation background!

SOLUTION:

read this:

and

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Videos/Master_documents_in_Writer

and download the “source files”, of the Guide Book of Writer, here:
https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/

and start building up master documents, as suggested by the always helping ajlittoz, and Hrbrgr, and mikekaganski …

the latter in this thread, too

so, thanks very much!

since the future readers will mainly looking at the solution,
I’ll mark Hrbrgr’s “just a little hint” as the solution…

BUT this is a thread, not different suggestions, so all that ajlittoz said is the main part of the “solution”, that is, an entry to editing a book in Writer…

THANKS very much to all three of you! :slight_smile:

Peter

#10

Don’t abuse the master/subs feature. 3-pages documents are not worth the trouble for master procedure. Unless these small documents are shared among several masters separately. If you don’t intend to reuse them in other documents, go ahead with a single file. Writer can manage without performance impact documents without frames (images, drawings, …) up to 500-700 pages in current equipment. Of course if your computer is old with limited memory (say a Pentium III 700MHz 1GB-memory), limit yourself to 100 pages.

#11

the abuse would have been against myself if I had used a far too complicated method for a simple task, right? :slight_smile:

anyway, by “let’s say” I meant “let’s experiment with”…

3x3 pages can perfectly demonstrate how it works…
my test documents are like that, too…

my computers are decent enough, I edit video and make music, and it works…
seriously, I can’t remember when I last have heard “pentium III” :slight_smile: maybe in 1998?

anyway, I’m getting to see how it works…
and I even like it! it is a very well thought up system!

thanks for your help

#12

I purposely took this example because I still have in my inventory an IBM Thinkpad T20 manufactured in 2000 :wink: I use from time to time to check compatibility. Of course, it doesn’t run latest Linux release nor up-to-date app versions but it is interesting to see how portable documents are. Also, it has a diskette reader which comes handy to read archives (files are then exchanged on the LAN).

#2

the Libreoffice help PDF, which is a book, is actually helpful…

now I can see that the MASTER DOCUMENT chapter in this book is about BOOK EDITING… so, cool already!!!

what’s more, it is formatted they way I described above :slight_smile: so it must be possible…

right now I suspect I’ve made a mistake when systematically avoided using the master document construction :slight_smile:

now I can see some light at the end of this tunnel…!!!

I’ll come back to report on how it went! :slight_smile:

#4

NOT at all solved – YET :slight_smile:

#13

https://www.openoffice-uni.org/ is an introduction to style based editing of well structured, maintainable documents and why Writer works as it works.

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