On 6 May 2008 at 14:48, Michele wrote: > Hello Mike, > > thanks for this great summary. > > > > 1. After an explicit page break, the first paragraph on the page > > defines the page style for that page. This can be set either in the > > dialogue for the page break, or in the page style property dialogue > > for the style of the new page. > > Not quite. Page style is independent of the first paragraph style.
Both right - they are independent, but the text flow tab for the paragraph format allows a page break to be specified, and if selected, allows the new page style to be chosen. So the name of the new page style is a property of the first paragraph on the page. ... > > There is thus some confusion possible as to what happens when "Format > > | Page" is selected - it's a bit of a misnomer, and /not/ analogous > > to "Format | paragraph", which only affects the current paragraph, > > leaving others using that style unaffected. It really ought to be > > "Format | current page style" or some such. > > Unlike paragraphs that can be formatted manually (as opposed to > formatted by applyng styles) formatting of the page always results in > changing the style. For a styles taleban like myself this is good but > for I understand that this makes page formatting quite > user-unfriendly for people who are not familiar with styles. I'm mixed about styles - as I am about structured programming. Not that that's a discussion for right now :-) Perhaps the problem is a conceptual one - that "manual" formatting of a paragraph generates a new paragraph style, internally named, of which the user is probably not aware. This is not the case for page styles - attempts to alter the current page actually alter the existing style, with a knock-on effect on other pages. Yet the interface to the two is quite similar, giving rise to an expection by the user [OK, this user :-) ymmv] that they will behave similarly. > > [snip] > > > > Now to be more speculative. What happens if I move to the middle of a > > page within my portrait document and double-click my 'landscape' page > > style in the stylist? I can't now find the reference, but I saw it > > written that OOo is supposed to search backwards for a page break, > > and set the page style property of the paragraph immediately > > following that page break. This isn't entirely intuitive; I have a > > hunch it may fail under some conditions, which may explain my > > observation of 'click on page3 and alter only page1' - depending on > > how the 'next style' is set, and whether the search succeeds, can > > affect arbitrarily far back in the document. > > My observation of the behaviour is different: OOo seems to ignore the > page breaks (unless you clearly indicated the page style of the next > page) and just replaces the style of the current page with the > selected style starting from the first page of the document and > working its way down to the last page. Only page breaks where the user > has specified the next page style are considered. The current manual offers the following explanation: "A page style is always a property of the first paragraph of a page whether or not this the first paragraph of the current page or the first paragraph of a previous page. However, not every first paragraph has the Page Style attribute. Since this is the case, OpenOffice.org Writer searches [when double-clicking a style] for the page style attribute of the current page by starting at the current cursor position and continues to search toward the beginning of the document, checking each first paragraph of a page to locate a page style as attribute." (http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/OOo2.x/user_guide2_draft. pdf; page 91) I'm not sure I'm clear on the first sentence of that. The rest is only a little clearer. I /think/ it's trying to say OOo scans back to see where the currently in use style starts, and alters the formatting from that point. And trying it seems to confirm that. Try this. 3-page document with text and no manual breaks, with 'default' page style. Make a landscape style as well. Go to page 3, and double-click landscape - the whole lot changes. Undo that. Now on page 2, explicitly give the 'default' style in the text flow box for the first paragraph. (This means there has to be an explicit page break as well.) Back to p3, and again double-click landscape. Now, the first page remains portrait, 2 & 3 change to landscape. The page-break-and-style setting acts a 'stop' to the reverse scanning. Incidentally, doing the same thing with /just/ a manual page break and no specified style allows the whole document to reformat. So, in effect, double-clicking a page style in stylist means something like "change this block of pages which use old-style and make them use new-style instead". Which seems sort-of sensible, but I'd still say not obvious given the different behaviour for paragraphs. > > If the default behaviour of OOo was to insert by default page breaks > with next style defined the situation would be greatly improved. This > way you could really apply a new page style only to those pages > between two page breaks and only to those. -- Permission for this mail to be processed by any third party in connection with marketing or advertising purposes is hereby explicitly denied. http://www.scottsonline.org.uk lists incoming sites blocked because of spam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mike Scott, Harlow, Essex, England --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
