LOWriter: First page: need to exclude page count and header footer

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#3

As soon as the general appearance of a page differs from others, you need to apply a specific page style. A page style is active for a sequence of pages between “boundaries”. I “boundary” is created by a special form of page break Insert>More Breaks>Manual Breaks where you can specify the page style to activate after the break.

However, in the case of a cover page, a simpler procedure is available, thanks to a careful configuration of built-in page style First Page.

Apply First Page to the first page of your document. After the last element" of your cover, insert a standard page break. First Page automatically requests that subsequent pages are Default Page Style. Modify bot page styles according to your needs (header/footer, page numbering, margins, …).

In case you want to start numbering your pages from 1 after the cover, you still need a “special” page break described above to be able to force the starting number.

ps: when asking here, always mention OS name, exact LO version and save format.

#4

Greetings

When I make a custom page style, I make sure I follow directions but it STILL counts the page I insert as PAGE 1 in the header even if I select NO HEADER or footer in the custom page style!

Any idea why it still counts the page and has a header?

#5

Don’t confuse counting pages and numbering them. Writer counts the total number of pages and you can do nothing against or for it. Numbering pages is under user control and the page number can be restarted to any value.

The wording of your problem is a bit ambiguous. So attach a sample file for better analysis.

1 Like
#22

@captlibre80
In principle, it’s quite simple if you, as an editor, understand and can implement the layout of any kind of literature. For those with less training, this topic becomes far too complex to be simply described or listed (as a flow chart).

Try and test yourself by trying out what …

… all this achieves.

#6

Each page is automatically numbered internally. Here’s an example of how page numbers can be displayed. I designed the cover page as follows: title page without a page number, inner cover page as “ii”, internally corresponding to the 2nd page. Then all the inner pages follow, starting with the right page “1”, whose automatic numbering is <3 – 2 = 1>. The 4th left-hand page thus automatically displays “2”, the 5th right-hand page then “3”. And so on. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to interrupt the right-to-left cycle and end with a penultimate and last cover page.
LO-WRiTER_Vorlage Buchseiten_050004.odt (381.1 KB)

#7

@koyotak
There is a serious flaw in your example file: you use an offset -2 in the page field for footers of Left Page and Right Page.

An Offset does not change the page number; it changes the page referenced by the field. An offset of 0 gets the current page and its number (this is usually what you want). An offset of -2 references the page before the previous one and retrieves the corresponding page number. If said page does not exist or lies in a group with different properties, the page number is either “void” or has a weird value. An offset is intended only to be used in implicit cross-references like “See next/previous page”.

The only way to change a page number is to Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break where you can change the page style and simultaneously redefine the starting page number.

Easy: Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break and choose the desired page style. A back cover is a “left page”. So define this style as Only Left and Writer will insert a blank page if needed.

#8

Greetings

  1. I am not sure what you mean about my sample having a serious flaw? Could it be messing with my current attempt?
  2. I tried insert “left page” for the book cover and YES (as it should) excludes the chapter count BUT lists the page number and a piece o text I have appearing on every page in the book? Any idea why it does this?
  3. ATtached is a scrambled, shortened verson. Can you inspect to see anything wrong?
    book2TEST.odt (74.3 KB)
#9

@ajlittoz made that comment in relation to a post from koyotak, and even tagged koyotak in the response to make clear to whom ajlittoz was replying.

#10

Yes these are the limits of texting.

Can you please inspect the file I attached previously? I will attach again here.

Thanks in advance again! SO far BIG help and the book I am writing will help likely millions of people
book2TEST.odt (74.3 KB)

#11

Did you try the steps I gave for inserting a new page style before the current page on a previous question, Writer: Headers with chapters & page numbers not excluding on non-chapters displaying properly? - #13 by EarnestAl ?

#12

In the case of the sample(s) you have provided, simply go to the first page and assign First page style to it. This will not display header and footer; in your case page number is in the header so won’t be displayed.

It isn’t clear (to me) from your question whether the following page should be numbered 1 or 2.

#13

It is not clear at all what your sample file should look like. It contains a preface and a chapter. Usually, they look the same because a “preface” is just a kind of chapter. According to this, I found two flaws in the document:

  • Outline structure distortion
    “Preface” heading is styled Heading 5: it is then attached to level 5 while it should be at level 1. I suppose you did this to get an unnumbered heading. There is a much simpler way without sacrificing thoroughness:
    1. style your Preface heading as Heading 1 (as usual)
      Of course, it is numbered
    2. put the cursor at start of the heading
    3. press Bksp
      The number is erased; you have created an unnumbered heading
  • Numbering mess
    Probably resulting from your attempts to mix numbered and unnumbered entries
    You started with unnumbered heading (because of the Preface?) and manually add “chapter x” at head of your headings. You then modified Tools>Heading Numbering for automatic number insertion with “Chapter” and “:” separators (note the difference in casing). You now have both manual and auto numbers.
    You also requested level-1 to start at 0 (zero), again likely because of your attempts to mix numbered and unnumbered entries. This could also explain the presence of an empty Heading 1 paragraph to “compensate” for the numbering offset though empty paragraphs don’t participate in the numbering sequence and can therefore be deleted.

And to make things worse, I suspect your sample file has uncovered a Writer bug which could explain why, after all, you get a consistent numbering despite the outline distortion. I investigate this and will report later.


Meanwhile study carefully the Writer Guide and perhaps the better Designing with LO available from the same location (after pressing “More” and scrolling down) which clearly explains the styling approach.


EDIT: filed tdf#168556 bug report, but not sure it would be considered as a bug; waiting for developers’ comments

#14

The error appears exactly when the table of contents is created cause the original page numbers are displayed there without the offset numbering.

#15

Yes, because the offset is local to the field occurrence. The TOC captures page numbers with offset zero (a TOC is supposed to show the orginal page’s page number). As I said above, an offset references a different page of which you show the number. This is not the same as changing the page number.

I gave the recipe to change this number: force a “special” page break.

#16

@ajlittoz
What is the use of such an “incorrect page number” – an offset that deviates from zero? Please show me an example!

#17

This is the solution! Until now, I had desperately tried to create a book using page templates and had always failed!

#18

The offset is used when you want to add something like 'Continued from page xx" or “Continue on page yy” when you have a periodic pattern generally with frames, e.g. you have side text (secondary text flow) every other page = offset ±2. You can then paste repeatedly the same frame. You could of course insert a cross-reference to the preceding/next frame but you would have to modify the fields in every frame.

When there is no target “object” (the page does not exist because it is beyond the end of document or before the beginning), the returned page is void. Unfortunately, even with conditional text you can’t eliminate 'Continued from" because you can’t use fields in condition expressions. This seriously limits the usefulness of offset.

A possible other usage of offset would be in headers to display a “range” of pages. A twisted example would be numbering the pages only in the right page, the facing left page not being numbered (for whatever reason). You could have the left page number (offset -1) at left in the right page header with the current number at right. When the left page does not exist (the right page is the first page of the document), the number is blank thus correct.

I admit that my second example is a bit far-fetched. Anyway, I never met contexts in which an offset was required/mandatory.

1 Like
#19

Finally, here is my test template for a book with a hardcover (cover pages 1 to 4), with the inner pages automatically numbered consecutively from page 1 to 11, with some interruptions for testing purposes. This solution generates a correct table of contents!

1_LO-WRiTER_BuchVorlage mit Einband_123524.odt (476.2 KB)

Although the file is written in German, I hope it’s helpful as a test object for now and useful for a customized solution.

#20

I really did not know what I was doing there; it was not intentional.
Any idea how to fix this – if possible – step by step?

#21

THanks for replies!

I will try this again:

I really did not know what I was doing there; it was not intentional.
Any idea how to fix this – if possible – step by step?

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