Is it possible to create a page style where
- “Test-body” text is in three columns
- “Heading 5” text is in three columns
- “Heading 1” text is in one column
I can achieve this by editing by hand, but I would prefer to have the page style do it for me.
A given page style has only one main layout and it cannot define different column layouts for different paragraphs or headings.
From the Writer User Guide, p. 116:
You can create columns and then type or paste text into them, or you can select some existing text and change the number of columns for displaying it.
When you select text and change the number of columns for that text (Format > Columns), Writer turns the selected text into a section, as described in “Using sections for page layout” on page 124.
Which means you’re doing it right: it is necessary to “manually” apply sections to the headings and define the desired column layout for those sections. An efficient way to do this is to open the navigator (View > Navigator), select the relevant headings, apply sections to them and name the sections after the headings. This makes for a well-organized document.
I just tried out my own advice and realised something: it is important to determine what the document’s main layout is (single-column or multiple-column). If the document is predominantly single-column, the multiple-column sections should be explicitly defined as such in sections, not page styles.