This is what I feared: your document is entirely direct formatted. This adds up to the regression problem. Direct formatting has two consequences.
It grows your file size because every format directive is unique and can’t be “common-factored”. It has to be explicitly included on every use.
Since direct formatting must be interpreted on every occurrence, it can’t be “pre-computed” for all similar applications as can be done with styles.
Independently from the regression issue fixed in the “next” release, you should learn how to use styles. They give you tremendous power, versatility and “comfort” to format and layout your text. They also considerably speed up text flow because of the methodic and organised structuration of the document.
Start by reading the Writer Guide for an introduction to styles. Then practice a bit on scratch documents before converting to this workflow.
Now that you mention it, I remember that a few years ago someone suggested that I get used to styles. And we even tried it together on my document, but the main problem is that the “third column” sometimes forces different widths on itself and on the “second column” (example attached). I also didn’t like the layout changes I had to make to fit all the requirements into the styles. I can’t remember if there were any other problems. On the other hand, I can see all the advantages of Styles, which I would use immediately if the layout result was satisfactory.
Another suggestion was to put all the data into a spreadsheet, but then my whole layout would be lost.
I guess the upcoming regression fix will shorten the wait a bit.
Do you see any “serious” drawbacks to leaving things as they are?
Thank you very much.
Example.odt (25.2 KB)
Your files show nothing like what tdf#162663 was about. If you mean that regression fix, then no, it’s about something else. I mentioned it before you provided a sample; the bug was about a huge paragraph with only line breaks inside.
Here is a suggestion based on table layout: Example-ajl.odt (20.5 KB)
However, as I have no specification about what you want to achieve, consider it as a quick’n’dirty attempt.
I created 4 paragraph styles:
- Word for the term in the first column
-
Definition for the explanation or definition of the term
It is a hanging indent paragraph so that the left paragraph limit lines up with the first word of the definition. Note that I have no idea about your A, R, S, U, X labels. Before text and First line indents need to be adjusted since you may have multiple labels. - Translation for the third column
- Variant (as a descendant of Word) for the compound expression(s) in the second column
Some tuning is necessary if you want extra space between “word groups” (mainly in Word and Definition styles).
Don’t use “cross-column” leader lines. I find them rather ugly. In addition, I implemented them thanks to an “out-of-spec” behaviour of Writer. This means they are not guaranteed to work if internal algorithms change or if the ODF specification describes more precisely the tab feature I abused. Also the leader lines will align correctly only if Variant and Translation styles remain “compatible”.
Note that with clever styling, your document size decreases from 25kB to 20kB. And the benefit will be tremendously higher on your full document.
@ajlittoz
Please give me a few days to process everything. I will send you my feedback. At first glance it looks good. For now, all I can say is thank you for your help and example.
Hi. Can I ask you a few questions? I have attached a
Editing Layout.odt (21.0 KB)
(no styles, just table properties).
Is it possible to have this layout for editing the document, but only have a layout like the “Print Preview”
for looking up records? Are the table properties enough or do I need to add some styles? Do you see any problems?
This document is intended to serve as a dictionary between English<>German. On the left are the German or English words to be translated. On the right are the English<>German translations. In the middle are the meanings of the words to be translated and the translations. The abbreviations in the middle and at the beginning of each entry classify the type of word, e.g. noun, verb, etc. Also in the middle, at the bottom of each entry, are possible common expressions containing the word to be translated, abbreviated here by ~. There is no meaning entry for these, and the translations are on the right.
Thank you for helping me get closer to my goal.
What do you mean? Print Preview just shows how the document will look when printed, i.e. without the visual clues like page areas guidelines, table hints, formatting marks. If your question is about the formatting hints, configure them in the View menu. But I highly recommend you keep them visible because they provide a valuable aid about what is really present in the document.
You definitely need styles. Styles are not only shortcuts for a collection of typographical attributes; they are primarily a way to classify semantically portions of text. In your case, I suggest your create German and English paragraph styles for the cells containing such translatable words, Meaning for the center columns and Expression for the common expressions.
Yes. Without styles, you’ll spend a hell of a time to tune your presentation and you won’t be sure of the consistency of it. In the first step of your work, don’t worry for the exact look. Make sure you use style consistently to make a distinction between the various types of text. This is the most important. After that, modify the styles to reach a nice-looking presentation. Look update is instantaneous across the document when you Apply or OK the styles provided, of course, that no direct formatting hides the styles.
Please ignore the print preview question. I was just thinking of creating this project in another application, such as Calc, to see if I could get a better presentation, not for editing purposes but as a reference document.
I have attached a revised table (with styles). I’ll try to do the beautification once all the data is entered. Do you see any problems or ways to improve?
Styled Table.odt (22.7 KB)
I just have two questions:
a) Is it possible to save the layout of this table (width of columns, etc.) in Styles, as I’m thinking of starting the table from scratch for each letter of the alphabet? If so, how?
b) Long translations like the one above in “Secondary School Level I Certificate” are very rare. What possible changes would you recommend to shorten this entry to free up space in the middle column?
Once I’ve sorted the above, I think the big job will be to insert all the data from the previous document into this table. I was wondering if I could contact you in the (rare) event that I hit a brick wall at the table in the future, and if so, do I do so through this thread?
Thanks again for your help. Appreciated.
@ ajlittoz
My lights went on. Finally! I’m busy transferring the old dictionary into the new (styled) one. Thanks for all your help.
Deleted post.
Sorry, but got sick of LibreOffice. Installed OpenOffice which works like a charm.
This is not a solution, but it appears the only way to reply on this forum is to propose one.
The last couple of days, I have exactly the same problem with KDE Neon Plasma 6.3.5, Ubuntu kernel 6.11.0-26 and LO 24.2.72.
Are you telling me that every time I define a paragraph by adjusting the size and font and then telling “body text” to conform to the selected parameters I am making the file more complicated? Is that what you call direct formatting? And yet, it worked fine up until 2 days ago. I don’t misuse line breaks.
I have about 300 pages of these documents. Changing the formatting would be a very big deal. Any suggestions welcome.
I don’t know how to send a test page.
No, what I used is the little “speech bubble” below a post (rightmost icon). It is a comment. They are the preferred way, as “answers” can be re-ordered (upvoted), so we have the correct one first, and not important talk last. But a discussion thread would be unusuable, if sorting is changed.
.
When you edit a post there is an icon for uploads. On my mobile in the lower right corner, the one with an arrow pointing upwards.
This seems to be a different question though related to it. IMHO, it is better to ask a new question (with all necessary details as you did) with a reference (a link) to this question. Thus, you’ll have more relevant answers and comments and contributors won’t need to scroll down to find your topic.
No. This is not the best way to do it but it does not mess the file. Schematically, when you format a document, you have three layers (this is over-simplified):
- paragraph style at deepest level,
- character style (which overrides paragraph style default character properties),
- direct or formatting (which overrides both paragraph and character styles properties) at shallowest level.
Direct formatting is everything you modify with keyboard shortcuts, toolbar buttons or mouse drags. This is the first step of your own procedure.
When you request to modify Body Text, you transfer direct formatting (DF) from the current selection into the paragraph style, thus removing DF. But, beware! if you have inconsistent DF in your paragraph (and it is the common rule with DF) and the selection does not cover the whole paragraph, some DF may remain. In this case, your document rapidly becomes an unmanageable mess.
The “correct” procedure is to modify directly the style. There is a, Apply button to test the changes and a Reset button to revert to state when you entered the dialog.
EDIT:
Your sample file is full of direct formatting:
- no use of character styles
- no configuration of Default Paragraph Style
You seem to have chose Nimbus Sans L;Arial for your preferred font and added it over your text (but not the footnotes). You could have modified Default Paragraph Style (DPS) so that the font configured here is forwarded to all other styles (because all others inherit ultimately from DPS). - no use of list styles
You pressed a toolbar button to create your bullet lists which are still styled Body Text. Usually, list items belong in a different semantic meaning than the main discourse and therefore should have a different paragraph style.
On a 300-page document, the quantity of DF should have an important impact.
I didn’t know anything about character styles. So what is the most painless way to fix it? And why has the pb just appeared recently? I use a lot of bold plus italics. Should that be defined as a style? There are LOTS of them in the file.
At least read the Writer Guide downloadable from the documentation page.. If you scroll down there, you’ll find the excellent Bruce Byfield’s Designing with LO which explains the benefits of styling.
Adopting semantic styling approach then requires a personal introspection about document structure (the various shades of significance of the discourse; paragraphs globally, details or divergences inside paragraphs, architecture or backbone in the development of your discourse, …). Every significance is attached to a style.
Thus, you can centrally control the look of a significance by modifying the corresponding style. It is extremely powerful, reliable, predictable and stable.
You already have built-in Strong Emphasis and Emphasis for this. Note that the name are not “bold” or “italic” which would “lock” the name to a look. The names hint at semantics, so that you can choose any formatting you deem appropriate to your case (e.g. forcing red for Strong Emphasis)
Suppose I have a good style. How do I go about applying it to my current file? It ain’t small…
It’s so handy to just click the B or I button at the top or, better yet, do ctl-B or ctl-I.
Restyling an existing document is not a quick’n’dirty task. It must be carefully prepared.
First step is to abstract the document to determine needed styles.
- existing built-in styles: they provide ~75% of the necessary ones
- headings: Heading 1 to 10
- main topic development: Body Text or variants Body Text, Indented, First Line Indent or Hanging Indent
- list items: List 1 for bullet lists and Numbering 1 for numbered lists
Note that in the factory configuration they don’t provide list items but ordinary paragraphs. You must attach either Bullet ⋅ or Numbering 123* list styles to these paragraph styles to get list behaviour. - header and footer: Header and Footer – if you need separate formatting for left and right pages, use xxx Left and xxx Right
- notes: Footnote and Endnote (automatically applied when you create a note; so, no problem)
- quotations: Block Quotation for a full paragraph, (character) Quotation for a sentence inside a paragraph
- (character) Emphasis and Strong Emphasis for varying degree of emphasis
- (character) Source Text for computer data inside a paragraph or, since word “Source” is not specified, source information within a discourse paragraph (it is up to you to decide which semantic you give to “Source” and to modify the style accordingly)
You also have the built-in page styles. IMHO, they are less “polished” than the other styles because there is more dispersion/liberty in page layout than in text semantics.
- First Page: I use it for my cover page, but can also be used as the first page of some sequence, e.g. first page of chapter; by default switches to Default Page Style at page bottom
- Default Page Style: the “common” style for the discourse without distinction for left/right page
- alternating Left Page and Right Page: used for “bulk” discourse when you want a different layout between left and right pages
- Landscape when you insert a landscépe page in an otherwise portrait document
You may need additional styles. For example, paragraph styles can be augmented with Comment, Recommendation, Definition, Rule to denote paragraphs with a different meaning in your text. Similarly with character styles: Trademark, Foreign Word, Irony, Confidential. With the latter one, you can design documents which rendering is different according to some condition. You then have a single source but what recipients see can be different.
Once you have designed you style set, I recommend you store them into a template to facilitate maintenance and evolution. However, you’ll need TemplateChanger extension to “rebase” your existing document on the newly created template.
You can now review your document paragraph per paragraph. Apply the ad hoc paragraph style. Select the paragraph (quadruple click) and Ctl+M to remove direct formatting. Global paragraph layout should not change (or should change to you new preference). Highlighted words inside the paragraph will lose their highlight. Ctl+Z to revert to the previous state. Hunt for highlighted words and apply corresponding character styles. Reapply the paragraph style and remove DF. Undo/Redo commands allow for comparison between styled and unstyled state. When you’re satisfied, remove DF and proceed with next paragraph.
You might find it lengthy at the beginning but you’ll soon find shortcuts with selection of multiple identical paragraphs.
Cheat. LO, and Writer, is highly customisable. Re-assign Ctl+B to character style Stong Emphasis. Unfortunately you need also to assign Alt+0 (zero) to No Character Style because style application is not “toggling” like attribute application. I chose Alt+0 (zero) by symmetry with Ctl+0 (zero) which is the shortcut to “return” to standard Body Text.
With smart customisation, styling can be as handy as keyboard attribute shortcuts.