On Wednesday, November 01, 2006 9:57 PM [GMT+1=CET], Adrian Try <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Please explain in detail how I get a paragraph whose initial capital >> letter is larger than the other capital letters in the same paragraph >> and also drops *below* the line it's on. > > Hi Harold. > > I've just been doing some fiddling with drop caps, and I have some > suggestions. If you'd like more details, please ask. > > Firstly, I would use paragraph styles for this job. Normally the > paragraph with a drop cap would be the first paragraph after a > heading. Whether it's Heading1, Heading2 etc would depend on the sort > of document you are working on. Create a new paragraph style called > Dropcaps (more details below). Then set up the "next style" field of > the relevant heading style to be Dropcaps, and the "next style" field > of Dropcaps to be your normal body text style (usually default or > Text body). > > When creating the Dropcaps style, create it from your normal body text > style (usually default or Text body) by right clicking and selecting > New. Name the style Dropcaps (or whatever sounds good to you). Click > on the Drop Caps tab, and set up the options the way you would like > them. Normally you would just adjust the number of lines (the default > is 5). There are other options there that you can experiment with > later. > > Once you have set up your document this way, after you create a > heading you should automatically get drop caps on the next line. If > you have already typed your document, or would like drop caps in > other places, you can simply apply the Dropcaps style manually to > those paragraphs. > > One final issue: short paragraphs. It seems that the height of the > drop cap is limited to the height of the paragraph. In other words, > if you have defined your drop cap to be five lines, but it is in a > paragraph that is only two lines high, your drop cap will be only two > lines high. It would be good if this was not the case! > > The only work around that I know of is to use soft returns > (shift-Enter) rather than hard returns (Enter) at the end of a short > initial paragraph. Writer will then consider both paragraphs being > one, and the drop cap will achieve its correct size. I normally hate > manual formatting like this, but since you only need it at the > beginning of each chapter or section, and not in all cases, I hope > that it is not too painful. > > I hope these steps and thoughts help. > > Adrian > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Adrian, Thanks. Yes, Peter Hillier-Brook discovered that the dropped caps thing reacts strongly to the "depth" of the paragraph. Once that is clear the whole things falls into place. I personally think it's counter-intuitive; I'd expect a 5-line dropped cap specification to force the paragraph to occupy at least 5 lines. But the current behaviour has an internal logic so it's livable with. Harold Fuchs London, England --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
