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Episode: 1375
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Title: HPR1375: LibreOffice 15 Writer Nested Lists Introduced
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1375/hpr1375.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:25:38
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---
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Hello, this is Ahuka. Welcome to another exciting episode of Hack Republic Radio and our ongoing
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series on Libra Office, focusing for now on Libra Office Writer. Now, one of the things
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that I probably should have mentioned before, I'll mention it now. This stuff can be a little
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bit difficult. I'm not sure audio is necessarily the best medium for doing office
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software tutorials, but it's what Hack Republic Radio is. The way that I do these is I first
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write out everything. I put it up on my website, along with screenshots, and that's how I organize
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what I'm doing, because when I start going through recording the program for Hack Republic Radio,
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you know, I'm not winging it. I hope that's clear that I'm working from a script. So if you go to my
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site at www.ahuka.com, you'll see Libra Office tutorials and for every one of the programs that I've
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recorded in this series, you will see that there is a corresponding page on my website, and it's
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got the screenshots and it's got examples and things like that that, you know, if you're having a
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little bit of trouble following what we're talking about as we go through this, you might want to
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check that out. I'm not quite as advanced at this point as Dan Waschko, because he actually has videos
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as well, and one of these days I may figure out how to do the video part, but right now I'm more
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interested in just trying to get this material out there. So it is what it is, but now that you know
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where you can find that, what we want to look at this time is we're going to take what we did before
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about lists, numbered lists, or bullet lists, and we took each of those apart, we saw the components
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that make them tick. Now what we want to do is we want to talk about nested lists. This is where it
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starts to get really interesting, okay? Nested lists are lists that have various levels. So in other words,
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if the first level is the main list, then each item in that main list could have a sublist under it.
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Maybe some of those things have sublists under them and so on. You can have up to 10 levels
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in Libra Office Writer. We mentioned that last time we were talking about numbered lists in
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particular how all of that works. So with 10 levels, this can get very frustrated. I think there's
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probably nothing that frustrates people more than nested lists because they don't understand how
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to work with them. Scientists, computer scientists have not yet been able to devise the telepathy
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interface. Now the telepathy interface would be the one where you just think what you want and
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the computer would understand and do it. Sadly, we don't have that. So what we're stuck with are
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computers that do what they're told to do and we have to figure out the language. We have to figure
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out how to tell it what we want. That's not quite as easy on us, but this is what we need to do.
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So if you're going to use nested lists properly, you're going to have to learn this, but if you do
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that you contain many, perhaps not all, but at least many of the problems you face. So nested list,
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each list item can hold a list of its own. Each sublist item can hold another list of its own,
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et cetera. So up to 10 levels. Now if I saw a list that had 10 nested levels, I would think this
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is a disaster. I'm really having trouble thinking about what that means. But two, three, four levels,
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that's not too uncommon. And particularly when you do technical writing, that's where you start
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needing to get into items where you're doing sections leveling and things like that. That's more
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for outlines. And as I said before, outlines is another topic in and of itself.
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But let's take a look at the nested lists and let's assume we're working two, three, four levels
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something like that. The key to this is something called the bullets and numbering bar,
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which you may or may not have ever paid any attention to. But if you're going to work with nested
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lists, you absolutely have to pay attention to this. There's a couple of ways you can do this.
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You can go to view toolbars, the view menu, select within the view menu toolbars and then put a
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checkmark next to bullets and numbering. And if you do, you're going to get a bar that has a series
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of icons that you can click on. Now this can be in different places depending on your machine.
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I have a Linux box and a Windows box available to me. So my Linux box has LibreOffice 3.6.2
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and in that my bullets and numbering bar is docked at the bottom of the screen.
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On Windows, I have 3.5, it is a floating window. Wherever you find it, you will need to get
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familiar with it. Now the other thing is if you simply put your insertion mark within a list item,
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that will automatically make this toolbar appear. So LibreOffice is smart enough to say,
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oh, you're in a list, you must want to do something with it. And then once you leave the list,
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it will go away. So what are these? The first button is a toggle that turns button lists
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on and off. In that respect, there's no different from the button that you have up at the top that
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does that. The second toggle is numbered lists on or off. Again, it's just like the thing you get
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at the top. The third one turns off numbering and closes the toolbar. You don't need any of these
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buttons. Not those first three. I have no idea why they're there. There may be some philosophy
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in the people who built this that says that was a good way to do things. I don't use any of those
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first three. And one of the reasons is I don't use buttons to turn numbering or bullets on or off.
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And that's the whole thing we've been talking about in this series. Use styles. You use styles to do
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this. And so if I'm doing with styles, I don't need to turn numbering on. I'm using a numbered
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style or I'm using a bullet style. So how I would do it is I would put my insertion mark where I
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want to begin a list. Then click on the list styles tab in the styles and formatting window.
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And then double click a style and it will be applied. So the real significance of this are the
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other buttons. And the other buttons are ones that are going to solve so many of your problems.
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Okay. So the next two buttons, there's one is an arrow pointing to the left. The second one
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is an arrow pointing to the right. The arrow pointing to the left is promote one level and the
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arrow pointing to the right is demote one level. Now these look an awful lot like buttons that you
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have up top on the formatting bar that are used to indent to decrease the indent or increase the
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indent. They look that like that but they're not the same thing at all. Okay. There is a distinction
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between appearance and function. And that's how we started our whole Libra Office
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discussion was to talk about why it's important to have a distinction between appearance and function.
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Now if you click the indent, all right, decrease indent, increase indent, you'll move your items
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back and forth but you won't change what they are. If this was a level one item in a list
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and you click the right arrow, it doesn't become a level two item. It becomes a level one item that
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got moved over. And that's not at all the same thing. And it becomes really apparent when you're
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trying to say, well, wait a minute. Why? Why didn't that change numbering when I did that? Well,
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it's not going to change the numbering if all you're doing is changing the indent. Changing the
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indent is purely appearance. What you need to do is promote or demote and that will affect the
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appearance to some degree because it will move it. But it will also change the numbering scheme.
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So let's say if we're going to demote one level, it's going to say, okay, this is no longer a level
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one. This is now a level two. And my numbering scheme is going to change blah, blah, blah. All right.
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So it's really important to use the promote and demote and not the indent.
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Now, the next two buttons are interested. They do even more. By the nature of nested lists,
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any list item can contain a nested list within it. Libra Office Writer refers to these as sub points.
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So you can move any list item along with its sub points using these buttons. And they will all
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change levels together. So if you have a level two list item with three level three items below it,
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clicking the promote one level with sub points just once. You just click that button once.
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It will turn your level two item into a level one. And it will turn all three of those level three
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items into three level two items. And it will promote all of them by one level. And of course,
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demote one level with sub points would be just the opposite. So you could take your level two item
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and make it a level three. The level three items under it now become level four items.
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And all of that changes then.
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Now, the next button says insert a numbered entry. This is useful as well.
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When you do this, the insertion mark moves down the page by exactly the same distance as if you
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would hit the enter key. But the difference is when you hit the enter key, what you're doing,
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we talked about this in an earlier tutorial. Every time you hit the enter key, you are saying to
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the computer, I am done with this item. Move me to the next item. Now, if you're on a list,
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what that means is I'm done with this list item. Move me to the next list item. And you get a new,
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you know, increment the number by one and start the next item. But sometimes you just want an
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additional paragraph or an additional a numbered line or something like that. And that's what this
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insert a numbered entry will do. So it'll move just as far down the page. But you haven't told
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the computer, I'm done, set me up for the next item. You're just simply saying, now I just want to
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drop down the line and keep going. So if you have to add that second paragraph without changing
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the list number, then that's the way you do it. You just insert an unnumbered entry.
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Then sometimes you want to move items up and down. Okay. Remember, we talked about how order
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is really important. Suppose you're looking at a numbered list and you say, you know, item two
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really should be item one. I had them in the wrong order. Now, the way lists are created if you're
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using these styles or really in any word processing program, it's going to work this way.
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Is that the numbering is put in actually by the program. You're not actually typing one dot.
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And then so, or if you start that way, usually the word processing program say, oh, you're starting
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a numbered list and it'll take over on there. But when you want to move things around, you want to
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change the numbering as well. And you can do that here from the bar by using and these are the
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up and down pointing arrows. So they don't promote or demote, but they change your position in the list.
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So all we have to do then is take a put our insertion mark in a list item. If we click the
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up arrow, it'll go up one. Every time we click the arrow, it'll go up one. And at the same time,
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it'll switch the numbers. So if I have something that is number three on my list and I move it up
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one using this button, it'll become number two and what used to be number two now becomes number three.
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Then we have the move up or move down with sub points. And we talked about sub points just a few
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minutes ago with respect to promote and demote. Same kind of thing here. So let's say that I have a
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item number three on my main, my level one list also has two level two items under it.
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And then I'd say now that item number three really should have been item number two on that main
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list. I'll move it up one. If I use the move up with sub points, then those sub points move up
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with it. So it keeps all of them together. So they won't be renumbered. There's no reason to
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renumber them. Those were sub points. So they were probably numbered one two or a, b or whatever.
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If you wanted to change those, you'd have to go into one of those items and move it up or down.
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But that won't happen here if they're just along the sub points for the ride.
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Then there is a button called restart numbering. Very important button restart numbering.
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This is one of those things that people get frustrated by this. And that's because the program
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is trying to keep track of things in its own mind. And it sometimes doesn't do what we want
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it to do because that telepathy interface thing we talked about just doesn't exist yet.
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So let's say you have a three item sub list.
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Three level two items under a level one. So we've got one dot blah blah blah. Two dot blah blah blah.
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And then under that we've got a dot something b dot something c dot something. And then we jump back
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to three dot blah blah on our main list. And then you say, well, okay, I need to do something
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under that as well. And so you create a list item. You demote it using the demote button to make
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sure that it's now a level two. And you think it's going to start at a again. And it doesn't.
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It starts at D because it's looking up and it's saying, well, okay, on level two, we've already
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used A, B, and C. So the next one is D. And you're going, it's not what I meant. Well,
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all you have to do at this point is click the restart numbering. And then it will say,
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oh, okay, I'll go back to A then. Well, you know, so A or one or I, you know, depending on
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what kind of numbering style you're, you've got in there. So it'll just tell it to restart with
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new numbers. Now, the last button on this bar brings up the bulletin numbering properties windows.
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And that looks exactly like all of the ones that we looked at previously for bulletin numbered lists
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where we deconstructed them. So it's the same kind of properties window. So how we've seen how we
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can work with nested lists using the bullets in numbering bar. And we've talked about the
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significance of promote and demote and the difference between the function and the functional
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definition of an element and the way it appears on the page and how to move things up and down
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and restart numbering. And I think if you've ever worked with nested lists and been frustrated,
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this is going to solve a lot of these problems for you. So this is Ahuka. And as always, I'm
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going to sign off by telling everyone, please support free software. Thank you and goodbye.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio. We are a community podcast
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network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show, like all our shows,
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was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever consider recording a podcast,
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then visit our website to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public Radio was founded by the
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Digital Dark Pound and the Infonomicom Computer Club. HBR is funded by the Binary Revolution
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at binref.com. All binref projects are proudly sponsored by LUNAR Pages. From shared hosting to
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today's show is released under a creative commons, attribution, share a life, free those own
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