Writer, frames, and text

I am back with more Writer questions. I figured out how to add a background image to a page, in this case, a painting. Then, I learned something about frames, which solve a few issues I had.

Still learning, I figured out how to assign frame text, but not how to position it, at least not how I’d like.

On my first page, I want to put [some text][logo][more text] at the bottom centre of the page. I got as far as anchoring the frame to the page in the correct position, but then I ran into my lack of knowledge.

The [logo] must retain its proportions, but can increase its width and height to match the two blocks of text. What I mean is the [logo] shouldn’t stretch in a weird way.

The [some text][logo] ideally should be tied together, as I need to duplicate those on the last page. The [more text] isn’t duplicated on the last page.

Adding to the dangerously little I have learned, I figured out how to change the font size, font colour, and remove borders from the frames, all of which for the better.

I am guessing I need multiple frames and multiple frame text in my styles.

I suspect I am making things more difficult than necessary.

LibreOffice 25.2.1.2 on Windows 11. On a side question, I see a fair bit of people talking about LO 7.x; is that a Linux or macOS version number for LibreOffice?

You wording is ambiguous.

A frame IS a text “subdocument”. The primary role of a frame is to host some text which is not part of the main flow, a part which can be read separately from it and theoretically in any order relative to main discourse. Consider frames as a kind of footnotes but not positioned at bottom of pages.

Therefore, you don’t “assign text” to it. You simply click inside the frame to activate its flow (the blinking cursor is now inside the frame) and you type your text.

Images are turned into frames so that they are managed by the same settings when positioning is concerned, but they can’t have text of their own.

This is explained more thoroughly in What Are Frames? - #3 by ajlittoz

This is a common misunderstanding though, in your case of the first page of the document, it has no adverse consequences.

DON’T anchor frames To page. This is a very special anchoring mode provided for documents which are in fact DTP (desktop publishing) documents where there is no (multi-page) main flow but a set of independent pages in fixed number. But even so, you’ll meet issues if you ever insert or remove pages.

In particular, don’t anchor to the last page because To page anchors to a physical page, not to a text element. When you edit your document, text volume changes. As a consequence, the last page does not keep its number (it is adjusted to the necessary number to hold the full document). But a To page frame remains attached to the designated physical page, resulting in either the frame is in the middle of the document if it grew or is on a dedicated page (almost empty) preceded by undeletable blank pages inserted to compensate for the lower number of pages needed for text.

The safest “floating” anchoring mode is To paragraph.

I don’t talk about As character because this mode does not use frames since it turns the block into a character which is then included in the current flow and managed as any other (huge) character.

With To paragraph, the frame is related to the item just like a footnote is related to its anchor.

To benefit from automatic repositioning after text edits, don’t position your frame with the mouse. This manual action results in an overriding direct formatting which is then next to impossible to remove and nullified all positioning directive you may have requested.

The correct way to position a frame implies usage of a frame style. The frame style allows you to define both anchor and position which independent from each other.

The anchor just determines the page inside which the frame will appear.

If you anchor To page this page will never vary because the anchor is not an element of text.

The position parameters tell where in the page the frame is located. I emphasised word “page” because the wole page is available. Position can be restricted in various ways. Usually, the reference location is the paragraph because we want the frame to in the vicinity of its anchor (think of a side or margin note). Other references are available; full page, page text area, lateral margins, paragraph text area, paragraph indents, above/below paragraph.

Once the sub-area is defined, alignment comes into play: left, centre, right or top, centre, bottom.

I recommend not to use “absolute” positioning (From …) because distances are then “frozen” and won’t adjust to edit changes.

There are many other settings to ensure a frame is always correctly positioned without being clipped by page limits and to interact nicely with text (wrap parameters).

Mastering frames and their styles is very difficult and requires a lots of trials and errors. Don’t be discouraged by your first failures. The platinum rule to observe is "avoid direct formatting on frames. Its effects are even more disastrous than on text. Frame styles are really a very powerful tool, even if it does not look user-friendly on first sight. They can really solve elegantly situation where frames apparently conflict with each other.

This is exactly the definition of To paragraph anchor.

Be more specific. Provide an example in a sample file.

No, it is an older release. TDF decided in 2023 to change from sequential numbering to year-based numbering. Thus 7.7.x was followed by 24.2.x with one release in February y.2 and one in August y.8.

This is the file, showing the grey alpha channel. I’ll try to be more clear: the image cannot be distorted for legal reasons. I can make it larger or smaller, but it must appear as shown. It cannot be stretched or smushed. Hopefully, that is more clear.

Interesting about anchoring to the paragraph. I never saw that coming. As for being discouraged, I tend to enjoy learning. What doesn’t appeal is when I’ve put in time and effort and things go sideways. For example, I had LibreOffice crash recently, and the recovery process destroyed the file. That wasn’t fun, which is why I am experimenting with frames in a throwaway document rather than my main project. That was a difficult lesson, but learn it I did.

There was a Keep ratio check box in Type tab of frame style. It is now replaced by lock-labelled box linking width and height. If you tick it, width and height will keep their ratio when you modify one or the other. But refrain to modify image size with the mouse: the constraint applies only on the corner handles. If you pull middle-edge handles, they change only this dimension (bug?): top and bottom for height, left and right for width.

Prefer to play with a dedicated frame style derived from Graphics. It is more reliable and predictable.

I experimented setting height to 100% relative to paragraph text area (so that the image adjusts to its companion paragraph). It works fine for height but width is not what is expected. Apparently the ratio box is not taken into account. If the style is used only for this logo, enter some height and width with the correct proportions. Quit the style and re-enter it. You can now set height to 100% of paragraph text area and width will adjusted correspondingly.

This is a very wise approach when you “discover” a new feature. Also you focus on a single problem without interactions with the rest of the document (which is also another problem by itself)

It turns out I will have almost no time until next week to test attaching frames to paragraphs. That’s why I haven’t flagged a solution or posted follow-up questions. I won’t even be home for three or four days, but I will try this as soon as possible.