At 01:29 05/10/2016 -0700, John Hart wrote:
Can a style be edited after it's used? If so how is it done?
Yes. And for page styles (which is what you should be talking about
here), it happens that there is an even easier way than the general
way, using the Styles and Formatting window, that others have
explained. Character and paragraph formatting can be achieved by
local formatting or through styles, but page formatting is achieved
only through styles. If you go to Format | Page..., you will see that
the panel is headed Page Style: <whatever>, and changes that you make
there are changes to the page style of the current page and affect
all pages with that style.
The instructions said insert a manual break, [...] and page break.
[...] At below the options is a pop down of styles.
Those are just all the page styles currently available, whether they
are built-in, built-in but modified by you, or new ones created by you.
I use First page for the Title, expecting it not to have a page
number, but it does.
The default First Page page style has no header or footer, let alone
a page number. You must have inserted this. When you insert a header
or footer, you modify the page style to have one.
If I knew how to use the tool, I could figure out the structure, but
knowing neither makes it very hard to use.
That's correct, you do have to learn how to use the tool before it
will become second nature.
At 02:08 05/10/2016 -0700, John Hart wrote:
On 10/4/2016 6:57 PM, Brian Barker wrote:
Why use a legacy version? Is the bug that you have yet to upgrade
software from January 2011 which was rendered obsolete in May 2012?
I'm working on an obsolete computer with limited disk space, and
it's a simple project that won't be using advanced features.
I don't think that current version are any more demanding that your
3.3, so upgrading ought to be possible. But - as I explained - this
is almost certainly irrelevant here as the facilities you need were
in that version anyway.
I don't know the structure of the style process, or any familiarity
with the tools. What's intuitively obvious to you, will make little
sense to me until I understand it.
It's not a question of what I understand or you don't. You said some
options that were shown in the documentation were not available to
you. I asked what they were. If you say what they are, it may be
possible to help.
When I right click on a paragraph, I get a pop down menu with
Default at the top, ...
That's "Default Formatting", in fact. And it's not (as you appear to
think) a title for the menu but simply one of the menu items.
... and a list of properties. I assume if they're changed, it
changes the default, not a good idea.
No: these items change local formatting of the currently selected
text. The term "default" is often confusing. If you do change any
styles, even ones that happen to be named Default, this changes those
styles for the current document - as you may well wish to do. It
doesn't affect the default in the sense of the default for your
installation of OpenOffice - the styles in any new document are unaffected.
Towards the bottom is: Edit Paragraph Style...
This is irrelevant if you are still asking about page numbering,
which is controlled by *page* styles, not paragraph styles.
So what needs to be done to get page numbering, centering, and fonts for:
The Title page,
the Copyright notice,
and the table of contents.
It's infeasible to present a complete introduction to page numbering,
page styles, manual page breaks, tables of contents, and so on in
e-mail correspondence. That is why people have referred you to
appropriate helpful documentation. If you are good at reading
manuals, you should find these a help. Once you have got the general
idea of how to achieve what you need, it is very easy to ask
questions about the detail and get helpful replies. Failing that, you
may prefer to read a book, enrol in a course, join a club, get local
help from a friend, and so on.
I would like the table of contents to have page numbers for the
chapters, and it would be nice to have the chapter names come from
the documents. Is that easy to do?
Yes. You need to give your chapter names one of the Heading paragraph styles.
At 02:33 05/10/2016 -0700, John Hart wrote:
Is there a way to change the style selected when a break was
inserted? If not, how are they found and deleted?
Yes: that's easy.
o Put the cursor at the very start of the new page (created by the
manual page break) - just under the tell-tale dark blue line
displaying the page break.
o Press Backspace.
o This will remove the page break and you can re-insert it, this time
choosing the desired new page style.
At 14:47 05/10/2016 -0700, John Hart wrote:
From what I understand, styles are associated with paragraphs, not pages, ...
No. Character, paragraph, page, frame, and list styles all exist. To
control page numbering, consider only page styles. (To get chapter
names to appear in tables of contents, consider only paragraph styles.)
All I wanted to do was put a title page, and table of contents in
front of a multi file document that prints exactly as it needs to.
Why this is so complex, ...
It's not complex, but neither is it trivial.
... in what is supposed to be a mature software package used by
millions is hard to understand.
I think you have answered your own question by this contradiction! If
it is used by millions, it must be as easy to understand as those
millions can cope with and are happy with. But they did have to learn
(or should have).
If volunteers at OO want their project to succeed they need to stop
adding features, and make it easy for first users to do something
productive with the software without having to learn a bunch of
intricate complexities.
Doesn't use by millions count as success? Remember that if you do not
like the software you are very welcome to use something else.
In user friendly software, this should take about ten minutes, not ten hours.
Is a piano user-friendly? Is a car user-friendly? You have to spend
even longer than ten hours learning to use those. One reason that you
are taking a long time over this is that you are going about it the
wrong way, writing long e-mail messages describing what you see, as
if these should teach you to use the software.
o The gear stick just says R-N-1-2-3...: what's that supposed to mean?!
o The piano has lots of keys, some white and others black - but with
no labels at all! How am I supposed to know what to do with them?!
At 16:02 05/10/2016 -0700, John Hart wrote:
The response I was looking for was a set of instructions on how to
accomplish a simple task, not criticism ...
Here are two simple tasks:
o Driving from London to Oxford.
o Playing "Happy Birthday".
Please provide instructions.
Starting with the template.
Aaargh! Please don't involve new red herrings. Page numbering is
controlled by *page styles*, not templates, not the clutch pedal, not
the key of C# minor ...
Brian Barker
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
