On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:54:36 +0700 Ken Heard <[email protected]> dijo: >Up until now my word processor of choice has been WordPerfect 5.1,
>I have spent the last two months off and on learning OOo with some >success, as so far I have managed to create two usable documents; but >there is much about OOo I do not understand. I am only now figuring >out the questions I need to ask, to understand styles in particular. >So please all, indulge me if I ask seemingly silly questions, as there >is much in OOo which is not intuitive to me. > >The first questions: I do not understand the difference between >"default", "text body" and "text body indent" paragraph styles. It >seems that OOo sometimes selects "default" as the default paragraph >style, at other times selects "text body". Are there situations where >one should be used over the other? What should "text body indent" be >used for? WP 5.1 was my favorite word processor for a long time, but I left it a long time ago. I find a WYSIWYG text editor to be a better fit for the way my brain works. But different strokes, and all that. I have been using OOo exclusively now for at least five years. I am glad to see you are trying to get your head around styles. Styles are the most powerful feature of OOo and you will not get the real experience until you get comfortable with them. And the learning effort will not be wasted because just about all text editors and layout programs these days use styles extensively. For example, if you decide to use a layout application like Scribus to design a newsletter or book it will import your OOo text and preserve the styles. As for your specific questions, I suspect a few things that you may have missed. In the following I am referring only to paragraph styles: 1) Styles can be based on other styles. The "default" style is the base for many other styles. The advantage is that you can make a change to the underlying style and it will cascade through the styles based on that style. 2) Part of the attributes of a style are what style to follow it with. If you change the "default" style to make the following style "text body," then that is what Writer will do as soon as you start the next paragraph after a paragraph to which "default" is applied. This can be a handy feature if, for example, you want a special style for the first paragraph of an article, but a variation of it for the rest of the article. 3) You cannot remove the "default" style, but you can change it to whatever features you want. 4) I use the "default" style only when I want to remove existing formatting. That is, I never apply the "default" style deliberately. It only gets used when I go to Format > Default Formatting (Ctrl-m). Normally I use my own styles. 5) "Indent" means that the first line of a paragraph is indented. In normal typesetting the reader needs a clue that the author has started a new paragraph. Traditionally you can do this by adding a bit of space between the paragraphs (extra leading), or by indenting. Normally one would not do both. And if you choose to indent your paragraphs, do not do so for the first paragraph of the article or for the first paragraph after a graphic element (picture, table, etc.). A "hanging indent" is a different sort of style. In this case you want the first line flush left, but the remaining lines indented. This is common when making a list of points. If plain text e-mail could do styles I would be writing this with bullet points where the paragraphs are indented except for the first line. 5) Styles are saved in templates. You can created your own default template which will contain whatever styles you want it to have. I don't know if any of the above resolves any of your confusion. If not, give a shout back and we'll try again. And welcome to OOo! --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
