In a message dated 2009.09.25 15:59 -0500, Joe Smith wrote:
What is desired is that a paragraph with embedded list look overall
like a paragraph without embedded list. This means, for example,
that between the list description and list elements there be no
end-of-paragraph spacing, while the last list element should
contain the default end-of-paragraph spacing. To say no more, this
is a messy affront to the concept of paragraph styles: for example,
what happens if you decide to extend the list?
There's no sugar-coating it: Writer simply doesn't provide formatting at
the level you want, or even a solid workaround.
Writer does not support any sort of "list object" that you can apply
formatting to, and list items are always separate paragraphs. In other
words, Writer's "paragraph" object is structural and much more
narrowly-defined than the semantic "paragraph" that you're describing.
I might say "spatial" rather than "structural" (semantic also be a
different kind of structure), but I take your point.
More practically, to fully style your "paragraph with embedded list",
you may need separate paragraph styles for:
* the text above the list,
* the first list element,
* the interior list elements,
* the last list element,
* and the paragraph after the list.
Yes! - and then the style inheritance problem is to make two or three of
those styles inherit some attributes from a default list style and some
attributes from a default paragraph style - the classic
multiple-inheritance problem of object-oriented programming. I had
thought/hoped that OO might have solved that problem for the domain of
word processing, but am beginning to doubt it.
If a document has only a few lists, I generally don't bother with all
the styles. I just add or remove some direct spacing as needed, at the
final draft stage. There's no crime in using some tweaks like that.
I have been warned against doing that if I am to use OO, particularly
Writer, properly. [In fact, the warning was that layout problems could
/only/ come from doing that.]
If you have a complex document, like a manual with a lot of lists, where
you can really benefit from styled formatting around the lists, you can
go with the full set of styles, or you could try a workaround of putting
the list inside a frame: You can control the frame's spacing with a
style, and it can be literally embedded inside a paragraph (anchored "as
character") to avoid the paragraph above/below spacing.
You can try a sample here:
http://martnet.com/~jes/temp/List_in_frame.odt
Great idea! - then it becomes a paragraph with an embedded frame, rather
than embedded list.
It looks ok, but ... I think this is probably an abuse of Writer's
design and not a general solution.
I'm not sure about that; in fact, it may be the most general solution
consistent with Writer's design. I want to think about that.
I could only find one request for this, but I'm sure there are more:
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=34083
Wow! I'm stunned that you picked up on this - which superficially does
not look like the same problem, but in fact is the same underlying
problem of the lack of multiple inheritance forcing many extra styles.
I'm really impressed with your search skills, and grateful that you have
provided a productive solution that may be within Writer's design model.
But, as that brings up back to Writer's design model, I must conclude
with a question that I have been asking, and for which which there is so
far no reply: If this example - a paragraph with embedded list - is not
the kind of case for which Writer provides the intra-paragraph line
break (Shift+Enter), do you know for what that capability is intended?
John
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