I’m using LO Writer 24.2.7.2 in LinuxMint 22.3.
I can’t get the page numbering to change between my Front Matter (i, ii, iii) and the body of the text (1, 2, 3). Not even using the “Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break” commands. All I get is a new clean page (not a labeled 'blank page" as before a “First Page”), but the numbers stay as in Front Matter.
What am I doing wrong?
GG
Attach a sample file for analysis.
How do I do that? Simple copy/paste of the text doesn’t give you the detailed Styles info.
When you write a new comment, there is a toolbar at top of the text entry box. Seventh (7th) icon from left is the upload tool (looking like a mail basket with an upward heavy arrow). Click on it, navigate to your document and select it.
This sample includes the Front Matter, such as it is at the moment, the Introductory chapter and a page of the rest of the book. The whole thing, set at 6.25 x 9.25 inch pages is currently 618 pages.
Sample.odt (22.8 KB)
Did the sample make it through?
This command is not used in your sample!
Your document is plagued with direct formatting. Also, your page styles are badly configured.
Let’s start with the page breaks.
You added an ordinary manual page break before “Copyright”. It incidentally works because Title Page page style is configured to switch to Front Matter as soon as bottom of page is reached.
Your narrative starts at “Introduction” which is a Heading 1. You configured this paragraph style to automatically generate a page break to First Page. But, you manually added a page break before this heading to switch to Front Matter.
Remember that direct formatting always takes precedence over styles.
Remove the manual break and everything goes back to expected.
First Page is incorrectly configured:
If you want to restart page numbering at 1 on first chapter, add a manual break to First Page before “Introduction” to force the page number.
This is indeed manual formatting, but a legitimate one because it is a unique one-of-a-kind event in your book. But pay special attention to its settings in order not to introduce problems later.
You make use of two pernicious forms of direct formatting:
Remove the double spaces at end of paragraphs. They won’t be created by the AutoText if you don’t type any space (which is the normalised method at end of paragraphs).
Here is the latest sample. I have spent hours removing the spaces after paragraphs. There were thousands of them. Also when I copy/paste the sample, my page style edits don’t transfer. I have to redo everything, such as page dimensions, identifying Front Matter, First pages, resetting headers and page numbers, justification, font sizes, and others. That’s probably the variations you saw with the last sample, if I didn’t manage to repeat them identically.
I have also spent time removing the vertical spacing and replacing them with Insert>More Breaks>Insert manual row breaks. That took time because there were 25 sets of them and for some reason it took about half a minute each every time I either deleted them before the change was complete, and another half minute after I set the row breaks. Don’t know hat caused that.
For instance, I am now trying to duplicate each style, and In “First Page”, even after ticking “Header on” it would not allow me to untick “Same content on left and right pages”. I had to change the Page tab setting to Mirrored to then change the Header setting, then back to the Page setting to reset “Only right”. It also changed the Page Format setting to Tabloid, so I had to change it back to “User” and reset the page dimensions.
In any case, I have now managed to solve a couple of the problems, but I still can’t get the Chapter Headings to be numbered, and now that I’ve changed things, I’m not sure what else is off, (such as the Headers on First Pages drop down with my setting of starting the page two-inches from the top) but I would like to make an appeal about the double-spaces after sentences.
Please, please remove them as as an automatic problem. You are absolutely right that they occasionally cause justification awkwardness, but so does writing some hyphenated words, using narrow columns, or setting a hyperlink. On the other hand, you should either simply let authors use the double-space as a personal choice, eliminating thousands of “Accessibility” problems, or (and I am not really in favor of this as it would cause additional problems) create an option to use them, which when ticked would initiate the sort of AutoCorrect options you mentioned. As for the case for using double-spaces between sentences, they are only one of many other accommodations making reading easier, including all the styles you allow, such as different fonts for titles, headings, quotes, captions, footnotes and all the rest. We also change lines and indent paragraphs, and now even add more space between paragraphs. Then there is the single greatest innovation in the history of writing (if you ignore the use of vowels) is placing spaces between words. What’s so wrong about placing extra spaces between sentences? The practice is in keeping with helping the reader. Treating them as problems causes more problems than it solves.
Anyway, here is my latest sample:
Sample.odt (24.0 KB)
Your sample is still wrong regarding direct formatting.
Using line breaks to vertically space is as bad as empty paragraphs. What you need is to customise Heading 1 paragraph style to set Spacing Below paragraph to ~3cm (in Indents & Spacing tab) and get rid of the line breaks.
The same goes for Title and Subtitle. Adjust the spacings to achieve your layout without spurious empty paragraphs or linebreaks. This will make your tuning much easier.
These are equal to line breaks. See above why they are useless in your case.
Spacing around paragraphs (yes, you can play with all four edges) should be managed with the paragraph styles. This is great because it operates on all paragraphs at once (provided, as always, no direct formatting comes across the way).
You can do that yourself with Edit>Find & Replace. In Find, type two spaces; type a single space in Replace; Replace All. No need to track them individually.
Yes but that usage emanates from the mechanical typewriter era where only monospaced font (and a single one) was available. Now contemporary typography boasts other “fashions”. And modern document processors provide tools to separate contents from look, i.e. an author “annotates” text in such a way that another processing layer deals with “enlightenment” like spacing. Once again, this is done mainly in styles.
Unfortunately, there is no tool in Writer to advertise for extra spacing inside a paragraph. Double spaces mix author’s message (what is conveyed to the reader) with appearance. The only possible trick in the present state of affairs is the AutoCorrect entry I suggested.
From an author’s point of view, as you point it out, spaces mark separation of words. In this role, a single one should be used. Enlarging (or shrinking) a space is a matter of context: detection of a special character like a punctuation and a user-specified rule should then be applied automatically.
Your problem here is once again direct formatting.
Enable numbering in Tools>Heading Numbering. Then go to your chapter headings. Your direct formatting is so deeply encrusted into your text that a hack is necessary:
Obviously your headers are manual. This means you must create one page style (or a set of) per chapter to allow for different headers.
You can use a single page style (or a single set with First Page and the running page) for all your chapters if you insert the chapter heading with a field. You can also do it for the book title but a field won’t allow you to italicise out “Our” word.
Most of your problems evolves around style management and configuration. Your sample also illustrates the “dangers” of direct formatting (because of its precedence). When you embark for a sophisticated elaborate document, you must avoid direct formatting and adhere strictly to styling. I recommend you study deeply styles.
Thanks for the help, and the patience.
Only two oddities left (I think). But before I get to them, I want to reiterate what I had said previously in my extended saga trying to transform this document from Word to Writer. Previously I had copy/pasted UNFORMATTED text page by page and footnote by footnote, then applied Writer Styles as they were needed. Your assumption that the document is full of direct formatting cannot be true. The only things that could possibly qualify at this point are my use of double-spacing between sentences and the act of ending paragraphs with a line change, and, according the Accessibility tab, using footnotes. Everything else is just typing.
One oddity is that my “First Page” Headers have have dropped to follow my styling of First Pages as starting 2 inches down from the usual top of a page. How do I convince them to retreat to their proper position in the top margin?
I can’t show that since copy/pasting doesn’t seem to transfer headers, or some of the other applied Styles. In this case Headers disappear in the copy.
The other oddity is that, changing the spacing, either between or within Styled paragraphs, works everywhere except on First Pages. Those remain as they were first styled, and Editing the paragraph style does nothing. I suppose I can live with that, but you may want to look at that as a glitch related to the variation required by the various Page Styles. Too much Styling interfering with desired formatting, as it were.
As for the double-space between sentences debate, I guess we’ll just have to disagree. In fact, precisely because contemporary typography can allow it, making too much of the former mechanical methods of typing, seems odd in my book. Why would it matter that typewriters had only one monospaced font? Why limit the choices of authors on that account? To me it doesn’t make sense, even considering the occasional justification awkwardness, but, at a stroke, removing many thousands of Accessibility problems does.
Which also applies to treating footnotes as red-haired step children. Using footnotes is absolutely fundamental to the way I write. For instance, I have 619 of them in this book. But I would like to hear the reasoning for the warning to not use footnotes. And while we’re on it, what is the difference, in Writer, between footnotes and foot notes?
You do this by creating a dedicated paragraph style. Derive it from Header so that any change you make to Header is also forwarded to your custom style. In the custom style Indents & Spacing tab, set Spacing Above paragraph to the required value (slightly smaller than 2 inches).
Have you applied the same style?
This belong in the personal preferences of every one. Consequently, there is no authoritative outcome. I just mentioned the change of “tradition” but I have observed that present-day US academics still require double-space from their students.
I disagree with several Accessibility items. Therefore I don’t use it. However, you can customise it in Tools>Options, LO>Accessibility. In particular, untick Check if document contains footnotes and the like.
If I wrote “foot notes”, it is a typo for the regular compound noun “footnotes”. If it comes from Writer documentation, tell me where and I’ll check and eventually report it to documenters.
You do this by creating a dedicated paragraph style.
I’m not entirely sure what I did (though I think that I just reset the “Space Above Text” back to ‘normal’), but after trying what you recommended, with unexpected results (it just gave me a multi-line header which pushed the book text even lower on the page), I changed something in the “First Page” page style, and all is now as it should be. Don’t know why it didn’t work before or why it worked this time.
I still can’t get the First Page paragraph spacing to cooperate, but I’ll let it go, I guess
However, you can customize it in Tools>Options, LO>Accessibility. In particular, untick Check if document contains footnotes and the like.
I tried that, but the option, under Accessibility, doesn’t exist in v 24.2. At least not in mine. I do vaguely recall seeing that as an option at some point as I was familiarizing myself with LO (before I had any experience at all), but it must have been while I still used Windows and LO v 26.2. I suppose I will just ignore the Accessibility tab altogether, too.
If I wrote “foot notes”, it is a typo for the regular compound noun “footnotes”. If it comes from Writer documentation, tell me where and I’ll check and eventually report it to documenters.
It had been in the Paragraph Styles tab in the sidebar, but I now think that I must have set “Foot notes” as a new Style at some point , though I don’t recall doing it. In any case, I have now deleted it.
Oh, pooh. I just noticed that my Introduction chapter, which should be Front Matter, has reset itself back to Default Page, changing the numbering from lc Roman numerals to Arabic numbers. But when I reStyle it to Front Matter, the First Page loses its styling and allows it to sit on an even-numbered page, and reStyling the first page to First Page, kills the Front Matter for the rest. I can add a blank page with a new page break, but it is not a labeled “blank page”, only a page empty of text.
What next?
GG