Writer template inheritance

[thumpercastle]

I’m on Windows 11 on an Arm processor, but using the regular 64-bit of Writer as the ARM version doesn’t display correctly.

I have created a parent template in Writer and saved it in the default templates directory as .ott. I then created a child template from it and saved that as another .ott in the same directory. I am expecting the child to inherit style changes from the parent, but I am getting nothing when I make changes in the parent. Any advice?

[mikekaganski]

Templates are self-contained. There is no automatic inheritance between templates implemented.

We have limited support for tracking template changes from normal documents based on that template, but that’s not applicable to templates themselves.

[thumpercastle]

Thanks! Do style changes from a template pass down to the docs based on that template?

[fpy]

@thumpercastle

down

Update styles in a template based on a derived file?

[ajlittoz]

@thumpercastle

Do style changes from a template pass down to the docs based on that template?

Yes, provided you didn’t override the style definitions:

• you have changed a style in the dependent document instead of doing so in the template
• you applied direct formatting over what is provided by the style

When working with templates (and master+subdocuments), it is imperative to apply styles exclusively. Direct formatting will pollute and “damage” your intended formatting. But this requires a change of mind: we are all conditioned by the ubiquitous M$ Word workflow which is deficient: it lacks character, page, list and frames styles, relying only on paragraph styles + direct formatting.