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OpenOffice.org outlining features -- help needed

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 6:01 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I need help from someone familiar with OpenOffice Writer :(

I've been googling this for the past hour and still can't find any decent information on how to do this.

I'm writing a book and I need to have the following details on my pages:

a) The page number (on all pages) -- easy, OK :)
b) The chapter name on all odd numbered pages
c) The chapter number on all even numbered pages

All this info is going into the page header, I'm not using page footers. I have the format all setup for this and OO seems to have successfully figured out that I'm alternating the information for odd and even pages.

The problem is that I can't figure out how to have OpenOffice Writer put my Chapter Numbers and Names into the header.

This is what I've turned up using Google.

Outlining works by reading occurrences of Paragraph Styles throughout the document.
-- OK, I have all Chapter Numbers as the style "Heading 1" which I've customized no probs.
-- All Chapter Names are using the style "Heading 2".

I also know that to put the information into the header I just "Insert -> Fields -> Other -> Chapter Name".

What I can't seem to find is how the hell to tell OO that "Heading 2" is a chapter name and "Heading 1" is a chapter number :(

If anyone can help me out with this I'd be extremely greatful because it's driving me insane. The documentation for OO only tells me what I already know too. I'm sure I'm just missing something simple.

Thanks guys!

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 7:19 pm
by Ambush Commander
Styles Formatting > Chapter Styles?

It appears to me that a more appropriate way of putting chapter names would be as the subtitle style... but I can't really help you here.

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 7:34 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Thanks for reading. I think I've found the way to do it, and it's a bit lame really but I'm almost certain it's the way OO works frm what I read here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7759
......
The chapter number or name is read from the last occurrence of the paragraph style assigned to Level 1 in Tools > Outlining.
What I've done, is to remove the chapter numbers I entered manually altogether. Then I made all the Chapter Names use "Heading 1" as the style.

This is the yucky part....

Go to Tools -> Outline Numbering. Choose "Header 1" as the level 1 setting. Hmm... OK. That's our chapter Name.

To get it to do chapter numbers OO counts the actual Chapter Names. Not only does it do that, but it also requires you to select a numbering style (e.g. 1,2,3....) which forces OO to add numbers next to all of my chapter titles :(

Never mind.... I made it a little bit nicer because at least OO allows you to specify a character style for that number, so that start of my chapters basically end up looking like this:

Image

It's not the way I wanted it but it works anyway :)

Seems like it's a known PITA in OO compared with other Writing Tools :(

EDIT | Doh! What happened to my page numbers? :P Page 1??? LOL

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 7:44 pm
by Ambush Commander
Mmm... thanks for the tip. If I ever need to use this, I'll do what you did. Works like a charm.

But how did you get the alternating pages thing to work?

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 8:02 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Ambush Commander wrote:But how did you get the alternating pages thing to work?
I added a header to page 1. In the header properties I have the "Same content left/right" unchecked. I then put a little table in the header with two columns (one for chapter number, and one for page number). Inserted the fields into those tables cells and that was page one done.

When I came to page 2 it started off trying to duplicate that same setup, so I edited it by hand. I reversed the table cell sizes/direction so that the page number goes on the correct side and changed the other cell to show Chapter Name as opposed to chapter number.

I think after that, OO started doing it automatically for me.... if it didn't, it certainly did by the time I'd formatted the header on the 3rd page.

I'll have a little play around with the outlining stuff and see what else I can figure out because it's damn useful for generating indexes and contents etc.

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 8:18 pm
by Ambush Commander
Ah, see it now...

Format > Page > Header / Footer > Same Content "left/right"

This is pretty interesting!

Hmm... I wonder... what are you writing about?

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 8:22 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Ambush Commander wrote:Hmm... I wonder... what are you writing about?
So do I :?

Kidding.... nah it's just something I'm doing as a spare-time filler. A little Get-off-the-ground-with-PHP kinda thing (estimating around 400-500 pages including examples).... yep, it's been done 1000 times but I'll enjoy the writing :)

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 8:35 pm
by Ambush Commander
Neat. I hope you try to instill good programming practices from the very start... would have saved me a lot of strife.

BTW, I've been playing around with this, and it only lets you set character styles for the chapter number hmm... so I was wondering how you got the nice "airiness" between the boundaries of the text. I think you can do it with a space seperator before and after... is that what you did?

Hmmm... this is what makes OpenOffice really exciting: it encourages you to use schematically meaningful structure instead of simply slapping styles on till it looks alright. Maybe it's just me, but Microsoft Word never made it so pleasurable to edit the underlying styles... hmm... well, hooray for OpenOffice 2.0. I've used OpenOffice 1.1.4 before but it was a little flaky.

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 3:01 am
by Chris Corbyn
Ambush Commander wrote:Neat. I hope you try to instill good programming practices from the very start... would have saved me a lot of strife.
Naturally.... it's something I'm focussing on :) I've heard people make comments on devnet about what books *should* explain more correctly/thoroughly so I will be taking these things into account.
Ambush Commander wrote: BTW, I've been playing around with this, and it only lets you set character styles for the chapter number hmm... so I was wondering how you got the nice "airiness" between the boundaries of the text. I think you can do it with a space seperator before and after... is that what you did?
There's a space character before and after the numbers but the white gaps is actually under the "position" tab, as a setting called "Minimum spacing number < - > text"... I have it at 0.10" ;)
Ambush Commander wrote: Hmmm... this is what makes OpenOffice really exciting: it encourages you to use schematically meaningful structure instead of simply slapping styles on till it looks alright. Maybe it's just me, but Microsoft Word never made it so pleasurable to edit the underlying styles... hmm... well, hooray for OpenOffice 2.0. I've used OpenOffice 1.1.4 before but it was a little flaky.
OO does like (well, require actually) you to use a very strict structure in order to understand the outlining. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.... i.e. does it lack a certain level of intellegence or is it trying to encourage better writing styles? :?

(Time to go to work :( )