On 6/27/07, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have a few complaints on how figures are embedded in OOo Authors documentation. As a reminder, this is how I expect to do it (In case it is all me). * Insert the image * Anchor the image as a character * Insert a caption * Frame is anchored as character with an appropriate paragraph style. * Set the caption to an appropriate paragraph style. The end result is that I have a frame, which I then center containing the figure. The frame is the same size as the figure. The caption is contained in the frame left justified under the figure. My complaints: 1. The figures do not export well to the MS Office DOC format. The figures end up floating around. In other words, there is a bug in OOo. We should probably submit an example document and request that this be corrected in OOo. 2. There is a bug in OOo that sometimes barfs on exactly the wrong combination. The document loads but if you attempt to view the page with the image, OOo Locks. After receiving the changes, I had to unzip the document, manually sift through the XML, find, and remove the frame with the caption. 3. If the figure is narrow and the caption is long, the caption wraps. I prefer the following, more time efficient, solution. * Insert the image * Anchor the image as character in its own paragraph. * Set the paragraph to a specific paragraph style which is linked to the caption paragraph style. * Insert the figure field in the caption manually (Field <field + 1>: text text text). The disadvantage is that the caption can not be left justified to the figure unless the figure is left justified. It is, however, easy to center justify both of them. So, you can center or left justify. I usually use copy and paste to start a new caption because it is faster than manually inserting the figure field in the caption. This format exports quickly. One of my drivers (other than that I prefer the format) is that I have access to a professional Editor that is willing to occasionally proof my material, but she only knows and uses Word. If I attempt to export a document to Word, the figures float around the page and obscures the text. Sorry, I just wanted to vent a little for no apparent reason. -- Andrew Pitonyak My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt My Book: http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/oome.htm Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php See Also: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html
Hello Andrew, There is indeed a style for figures which is OOoFigure (IIRC). The problem of wrapping long captions and export to MS Word remains, but it streamlines the procedure quite a bit and makes it similar to what you would like to see. Note also that Jean sometimes switches to a table layout of the page to manage figure. Regarding export to MS Word, I can see your problem, but I guess that this affects very few people since I would think that the "customers" of the OOo User Guide have OOo installed and use it to read it. This is not to say that the problem is not serious or that it does not deserve attention, but I guess it should not be *the* reason for changing the template (besides my appallingly bad way in which MS Word manages anchoring of pictures is one of the reasons why I switched to OOo). Cheers, Michele
