I’m creating a book where there will be a lot of images in the background with text on them and I’m intending to put some of them on two pages, a photo with a landscape, for example. I’m trying to understand if there is an option of something like merging two pages or is it possible to use the Landscape layout for these specific pages and put two page content on one page by creating two columns for the text, for example? Or maybe the image can be easily cut in two, put in the background and then I can simply see those two pages together in Book view? Thank you in advance.
I’m not sure that LibreOffice Writer is the right tool for something like that. Writer is a word processor, software to produce a flow of text, with some limited lay-out possibilities, that were expanded over time, but are still limited. What you describe, requires something like Scribus. You may get away with it in Writer, though.
Keep in mind that if you want to use portrait and landscape with two columns format, a landscape page still counts as a single page for Writer’s page numbering system. So you will need some tricks to restart page numbering after a landscape page.
As @anon87010807 notes about page numbering, and considering the flow of the text, I think the easiest option is in your last question: cut the image in two.
Thank you for your advice, if LO doesn’t work, I’ll try Scribus, though I’m wondering if its format can easily be converted to LO, Word or pdf.
Scribus exports to pdf quite easily, with more options than Writer. But it has a very steep learning curve. Don’t even try to convert Scribus to Writer, instead import text made with Writer in Scribus.
I would use a special page template for for example DIN-A3-Landscape.
For the text you use two frames.
Thank you for the information, though I’ve never used templates. Can a template be applied only to a specific page or to the whole document?
I think @Hrbrgr rather meant a DIN-A3 page style. A Writer template is a skeleton for a whole document.
It depends on your output device (your printer or the printing shop one).
I understand your image is not the “permanent” background but an occasional insertion of a picture here or there.
I assume your book is A4 (the real format does not matter) and you want an A3 picture after some paragraph.
- create a page style for A3 landscape
- after the said paragraph,
Insert>More Breaks>Manual Breakto switch to your A3 landscape page style - do whatever you want in this page
- add another manual page break for creating a blank back page if you’re printing duplex (
Ctrl+Eis enough for this purpose) -
Insert>More Breaks>Manual Breakto revert to your initial page style (likely to be Default Page Style)
This procedure allows insertion of a double width page in the middle of your book. Physically, this page will likely be printed separately (unless the printer has several trays with automatic selection) and manually inserted into the book after some elaborate folding so that it is bound on one side only and can be easily unfolded.
If your double-width image is to be positioned as a left+right page pair so that it can be seen simply by opening the book, there is no other alternative than cutting the picture and inserting the halves into separate consecutive pages. Caution with the need to sync with page parity. Take care that editing text preceding the image does not create a parity mess. This means you must insert manual page break to Left Page style before the picture. Don’t forget to revert to your Default Style otherwise you’ll alternate Left Page/Right Page up to the end of the book (you may already use them so this would not be a problem).
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Thank you for your advice, I’ll try this one to see how it works.