While I was writing the text of my work, I realized that, on some pages, the numbering of the titles relative to the general index undergoes some jumps, apparently for no reason. I repeat: only in some chapters. Yet, apparently, all the titles are done in the same style (H3). How can I solve?
Examples:
prova.odt
The sreenshot are purely useless because we have no idea about the extra direct formatting applied to the Heading x paragraphs. This can be caused by various factors: requesting a manual numbering reset, applying numbering with a toolbar button (while Tools>Chapter Numbering is already active, which creates conflicts between two independent numbering sequences), a spurious derived paragraph style application, …
Though many of these operations qualify as direct formatting, they can’t be removed with Ctrl+M.
Edit your question to attach a small sample file with the issue.
Please do not use Add Answer but edit your original question to enhance the details of your question (answers are reserved for solutions to a problem on this Q&A site).
You completely messed up the document structure to a point you make my Writer 7.0.4.2 crash!
The document is plagued with tons of direct formatting which will defeat any reasonable attempt to format it later. You override nearly all attributes of styles, meaning you can’t rely on them to help you in this task (e.g. you use the ruler marker to create negative indents while the styles have none).
You damaged Tools>Chapter Numbering making it unusable:
Your outline is quite surprising:
F12) superimposed with number suppressed (=> conflict between two contradictory features!). I think the fact it is empty may be accidentally a result of anonymising the document but it does not excuses the conflict.F12) you constrain on different levels using Tab at start of data (=> again conflict between the TOC and list features)F12 and this numbering was not completely erased, then creating a list of their own which breaks the faulty “outline list”. When Writer meets “1.1 La mmm”, it sees a request for a list identical to the preceding “outline” one but there is an independent list in between. Consequently it starts a new list from 1.You have manually added many useless hyperlinks in the TOC. Keep with those generated by default. They provide all you need. What you added are nonsense because their target is themselves.
Your TOC is also a “masterpiece”.
You tried to compensate your formatting errors by tweaking the collection engine. In the Type tab of the creation dialog, checking Outline is enough. You added Index marks and Additional styles. The first will cause all index entries to be displayed in the TOC, in page order, without merge. You didn’t filter the list of styles in the second meaning that all styles will contribute to the TOC (including footnotes and endnotes!). And you’re lucky because the sample file you provided is so badly styled (only Heading 3 and Default Paragraph Style) that this bug doesn’t show up.
#How to fix?
###Read the chapters about styles in theWriter Guide and stop working on your book for one week or two to practice on dummy documents.
You won’t go anywhere if you persist in using Writer so badly. It is more than a typewriter. You’re a bit like a newbie in a plane trying to behave like a car driver. This ends up in a crash, 100% guaranteed.
At least, don’t mix lists with chapter numbering.
Chapter headings are designated through styling with Heading n, one style per level. The number is enabled and setup with Tools>Chapter Numbering.
Don’t add a number with F12. This is redundant and contradictory. You’ll mess both lists and chapters.
##You have damaged the factory configuration of Writer (only for this document I hope).
Start with a blank document so that you can recover the default definitions. Paste your present content as unformatted text so that no present styling nor direct formatting is carried over to the new copy. When you have recovered your text, style it consistently. In your own interest, avoid absolutely direct formatting. Styles are your friends. There are not only paragraph styles but also character and page styles.
If you don’t need sections (your sample file contains one and I could not guess its usage), don’t insert sections. They complicate document structure and may cause instabilities if you don’t master the concept.
Sorry for being so negative but don’t consider using any document processor is an easy task. You must learn how to tame them. Don’t rely on your possible knowledge of Word. Word did a lot of harm to rigorous document formatting by adopting principles contrary to typographic rules and presenting them as “intuitive” due to its dominant position.
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Wow. It is the first time that I have used writer for such a complex job. I was misled by a forum response that advised me to create specific styles for each level. Anyway, I leave everything and read the style guide. If I understand correctly, I have no way of recovering the text. I have to format and reformat all over again … It will be a lot of work but, never mind …
You could try to reformat but the present styling is so bad that the amount of work to do that is probably more important (and worse more error-prone) than starting anew from raw text.
I’ll edit my answer to remove misspellings and add missing words which changed the meaning of some sentences. Nothing new added to the content.
I need to solve the problem quickly, and in the best possible way. Unfortunately, to take advantage of printing, I chose to use writer and now I have already paginated over 400 of the 700 pages useful for my work. Rewriting it all over again is impossible. It is full of notes and links (over 500 notes and three thousand links). I should find a way to undo the incorrect formatting and copy into the new file, only the text (including notes and links). Is there any way to do it? In the meantime, I’m reading the style manual to better understand the path to take. Thanks for the advice you can give me.
As I already mentioned, you are faced with two issues.
You tweaked so much Writer that you damaged the built-in configuration at least for your document. Starting from a blank one will put Writer in you user profile state. If it is safe, this is a good starting point. Otherwise, you must reset it, eventually losing some customisation.
Your text by itself, as I can judge from the fragments on your various questions, is insufficiently styled, suffers from excessive direct formatting, does not use character not page styles. In addition, there are many sections which have no real justification. And from I could see in the Navigator, it is likely that your structure (based on Heading n) in not consistent.
When you undertake such a huge work, it is absolutely necessary to think ahead of time to the semantic content of your text. One significance = one style. Some paragraphs are headings => Heading n styles to structure the book.
Some paragraphs are comments => a specific style. Some paras are clearly quotations => Quotations style.
The bulk of the discourse is Text Body.
As you see, I never use “bold”, “italic”, font face change; I use high level qualifications for the paragraphs (the same is true for words to enhance). The role of styles is to convert these semantic “values” into typographical variants. Variants are much more limited than semantic nuances and you may end up with several styles looking the same. It is not important. What is important is to keep the distinction (through styling) between content with different value so that you can control them centrally.
Even if you find the task daunting, I think you can’t avoid to reformat everything manually.
I am a bit afraid by your “I have already paginated over 400 pages”. This seems to suggest that you don’t use page styles nor the text flow attributes of paragraph styles and you force manually page breaks. This is wrong.
As I read the guide I am trying to do a test again. From a blank page, I copy the individual pieces of the text. To insert chapters and paragraphs, do I insert “bulleted and numbered list”? and style it through “set paragraph style”?
Chapters are not lists! If you go through “bulleted and numbered lists”, you’ll again create unmanageable conflicts. Style them with Heading n. There are nice shortcuts for them: Ctrl+1 to 4. Ctrl+0` is another nice shortcut for Text Body.
It is likely that your chapter will initially not be numbered. Enable numbering with Tools>Chapter Numbering and nothing else!
Remember that good styling separates content from appearance.You can dramatically change the look of your document playing only with styles without the need to edit text. Of course, provided everything, including words, have been styled with the full collection at your disposal: paragraph, character, frame, page, list.
I have prepared this draft card. If I insert the unformatted text of the first version in this tab, using for the formatting, only the style of the titles of the chapters and paragraphs (Title 1, 2, 3). Could this be an acceptable solution? (For the odt file see in the main post)
The newly attached file is still wrong because you mixed again Heading n and list numbering.
Since the issue becomes more and more specific and has less general interest, contact me on ajlittoz (at) users (dot) sourceforge (dot) net. After initial validation, we can continue on private mail.