On 3/14/2011 5:29 PM, Tim Johnson wrote:
I'm trying to wrap my head around the theory of how paragraphs are
managed in OO. (Using OO 3.3 debian on ubuntu).
> From an earlier posting with input from Brian and Andy I've arrived
at the following understanding of how paragraphs are managed. The
sequence I describe follows (to my understanding) the order of
precedence.
-----------------------------
1)Default Document :
> From Tools->Options->OpenOffice.Org Writer->General,
set "Tab stops"
-----------------------------
2)Paragraph Style :
With cursor on a paragraph, the bottom paragraph style will be
displayed (on my setup) at the leftmost of the lowermost toolbar at
the top of the OO main window. The font will be displayed in a
window to the right of the style window. To the left of the style
window is an icon, which if clicked will bring up the "Styles and
Formatting" window. The leftmost icon on this window should be
selected, if not - select it. Once should then be able to find an
item with the same name as the style. One may need to try some other
options from the drop-down list at the bottom of the window.
Right-clicking on the style name and choosing "Modify" will allow
one to edit attributes of the paragraph style.
-----------------------------
3)Individual paragraph
With the cursor in a paragraph, right clicking will bring up a
dialogue menu and choosing "Paragraph" from the menu will allow
editing of attributes for the individual paragraph.
:)How am I doing so far? I'd welcome edits, corrections and
comments. When it is determined that I have "got it", I will restate
for archival purposes and enter the conclusion into my own knowledge
base.
TIA
Looks pretty good, but realize that the paragraph styles and font selections are not necessarily
visible -- they can be removed from the toolbar displays, and many people do so, to save screen
space and (especially for character formatting like fonts, bolding, etc.) to avoid the tendency to
use direct formatting*. A common characteristic is that when the Styles and Formatting dialog is
visible, you can easily identify the style applicable to the current cursor location (at any level
-- page, paragraph, character, frame, or list) by selecting the level and the Applied Styles subset;
it will be highlighted. That's easier than trying to look in, say, All Styles for a match. In
general, you probably want to start with Automatic Styles to select common appropriate styles for
new material.
* Direct formatting trumps all the style information and means that you lose the ability to modify
your whole document consistently if you want to, say, change the font for a particular kind of text
element. It can get very messy! If you want to keep documents alive for future use, it's really good
to train yourself to use styles rather than direct formatting.
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