At 14:44 09/05/2007 +0200, Mark Coetsee wrote:
I am a lawyer using version 2.2.0 of OpenOffice.org. My problem is : When using "tabbed" paragraphs the right hand side of the resulting paragraphs does not line up neatly. I feel that this is a major flaw in the program (Writer) since appearance is often vital to all formal documents.
We need to be clear what you are doing here. I take it that by "tabbed paragraphs", you mean that you press the tab key before each line, and then press Enter at the end of each line before the tab for the next line, so that each line of your paragraph is indented to the first tab stop. And possibly some paragraphs are similarly indented by two or three tab presses. Is that right? (Incidentally, if you are pressing tab more than once at the start of a line - or just about anywhere in a word processor document - you are making problems for yourself: you should always set your own tab stops so that only one tab is necessary at any point.)
If this is so, you are going the wrong way about achieving what you need. But before I recommend alternatives, here is a workaround. Your problem is that with a hard return at the end of the line, each line becomes a separate paragraph in the eyes of Writer. And it won't justify the last (or, in this case, the only) line of a paragraph. The solution is to use not a paragraph break but a line break between each line: instead of pressing Enter at the right of each line, press Shift+Enter instead. Provided you have the alignment set to Justified, this will solve your problem.
Now, how *should* you be doing this? Well, there are three small grey triangles in the ruler bar above the text. The one at the lower left controls the left margin. Put the cursor in one of your paragraphs. Drag the triangle to the right a suitable distance. (Don't worry that the top one moves too: that's good.) The whole paragraph reformats with the desired indent. You can set different indents for different paragraphs. And - here's the good bit - when you need to modify your text, everything flows around without the need for manual correction.
If you need to do this sort of thing often, you may like to create separate paragraph styles for each level of indent. You can then simply apply the relevant style to each paragraph, instead of having to drag the left margin around each time. The relevant parameter is "Before text", which is on the Indents & Spacing tab in the Paragraph Style window.
I trust this helps. Brian Barker --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
