hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1190.txt

Episode: 1190
Title: HPR1190: LibreOffice 03 Writer Introduction to Styles
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1190/hpr1190.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:19:50

---

Hello, this is Ahuka and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio and this is
part of my ongoing series on Libra Office and right now we are still focusing on Libra
Office Writer which is the word processing package. Last time we took a look at
templates and I said that templates were one of the two key concepts you needed to
understand in order to work effectively with any word processing program. As I've
said before this stuff works pretty much the same on all of them. I have taught
this to people in Microsoft Office and Libra Office and they really work very much the same.
So a lot of this stuff is transferable but I'm going to do this from the standpoint of Libra
Office because I want to promote free software as much as possible. So last time we talked
about templates and we talked in particular about the default template. Although we mentioned
a few other things as well and so we understand that templates are containers right that they
contain a lot of information that can be used when you create a new document. What I want to focus
on now is another key part of that. Styles you can create styles and store them in templates.
In fact if you're going to create styles you pretty much have to store them in templates. There's
no other place for them to be stored. So this is a key concept. So let's say that you had created a
default template as we talked about last time. You've saved it on your hard drive and you want to
now add some more material to it. Styles would be a good thing to add and what do we mean by styles?
Well what we're talking about here and I want to cross this back to the discussion that we had
about web pages and websites where we talked about separating presentation from content.
And so with websites the way you do that is you have functional definitions of things.
So this is a paragraph. This is a heading. This is a block quote. Those are all functional definitions.
It doesn't say anything about how they're going to look. It simply says this is how it functions
within this document and in word processing very much the same. We talked about that as well.
So what we're going to get at here is that with styles what you're doing is you are creating a link
between a functional definition and appearance. Now the functional definition is important.
For instance, we'll talk about this more later when we get to
impress which is the slide show presentation graphics program. But one of the things you can do
is you can create an outline in writer and turn it into a slide deck. And the way you do that
is by using heading styles consistently because it simply reads that as a functional definition.
So a heading one would be the title of a slide heading two would be a bullet point.
A heading three would be a sub bullet point. And so it reads all of that. And that's what we
mean by a good set of functional definitions. Now the functional definitions are there but you
also want to give them a certain appearance. And this is something we've talked about before.
There can be visual language that you want to communicate about these things. And for instance,
if we were talking about headings, headings are typically bold. So that's one of the visual
components of that. Block quotes are typically indented on both sides. And that's one of the
things about block quotes that you might note. So the visual aspect is also important here.
So how do we accomplish all of this? Well, it's not hard to do. If you open up Libra Office writer
and you take a look at, you go to the format menu and in the format menu, you will see styles
and formatting. And then you take a look and you see, oh, it has an F11 there as well. So there
is a key equivalent, a hot key that you can use to bring that up. So press F11 or do it through
the menu, however you choose. And you're going to see a little window pop up. Now this one is a
floating window that says styles and formatting. And the styles and formatting window has several
sections. So at the very top, we see it's the name, styles and formatting. And then at the very
left, there is a menu. And that's just basically the menu you see in all windows. And then you've got
the minimize, maximize, close, all of that on the very top. So let's call that the first row.
Then there is a second row. And the second row, probably by default, is open to what are called
paragraph styles. But you see there are five little icons there. Paragraph styles, character styles,
frame styles, page styles, list styles. A lot of stuff there. And then if you go over to the other
side, it's fill format mode, new style from selection. And there's a drop down. You can update
styles, load styles. And then there's a window with a listing. And so you might see things like
complimentary clothes, default, first line, indent, hanging, indent, heading, heading one, heading
two, heading three, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all the way down at the bottom,
you see there's a drop down. And it might say automatic, but you can go to hierarchical or all
styles or applied styles or custom styles. So it's looking very complicated, isn't it? But this is
one of the things that you need to master. Now, the first thing I have to make clear to you, you don't
need to understand all of these styles. Okay, there's a lot of them here. You can do a lot by
simply mastering a half a dozen that you would tend to use over and over. And once you get comfortable
with that, you probably add a little bit to it. Nothing wrong with that. Now, I say this is a floating
window. One of the things that I do with my Libra office writer, and this is a standard for me,
is I will hold down the control key and click on that second row. That second row, that's the one
that has the five icons for paragraph styles, character styles, frame styles, blah, blah, blah,
hold that down and give a double click with the mouse in that second row while holding down the
control key. All right, so hold down the control key, double click on the second row.
And what's going to happen is you're now going to dock this window over on the left side of
the page. Now, for me, this is the standard. I always have that open. I always have it docked
over there on the left because I'm going to use styles and I want to have access to that.
Now, let's look at each of these kinds of styles in turn because it's important to understand
what they do. The very first thing you see are paragraph styles. And when we say paragraph style,
you might think that only applies to what you think of as paragraphs, but in this sense,
that's not exactly correct. One of the things that I often do when I am working in Libra office
writer is I turn on what are called non-printing characters, which is represented by a button with
a paragraph mark. So I'm looking at Libra office in front of me. I see that there's a row of menus,
you know, file, edit, view, insert, blah, blah, blah. And then right under it, there's a row of icons.
And if I go near the end of that row of icons, I see a paragraph mark. That's like a backwards
letter P kind of. And it's the next to last icon there. And if I mouse over it, it says non-printing
characters. And then the hot key is control f10. And if I click that, it turns it on.
Now, this is something that a lot of people are initially going to go, oh, this is ugly, this is
terrible. It's good to learn how to use this. I tend to leave it on a lot at the time, frankly,
because it gives me information. Now, the fact that it's non-printing, what that means is you will
see it on your computer screen. But when you go to print the document, it will not appear.
If you mail the document electronically to someone, unless they have turned on non-printing
characters themselves, they won't see it. All right. You only see it if you've turned it on
on your computer screen. And the three things that you tend to see with this are paragraph marks,
space marks, and tab marks. So, you know, space mark, you know, every time you hit the spacebar,
it's a little dot that goes in there. That does it make things look a little busy. Yeah, it kind
of does. But on the other hand, it can help you find things like, oh, I've got two spaces here
where I only wanted to have one. It's a lot easier to find if you can actually see where the
space marks are, because particularly with proportional fonts, it can be pretty hard to figure that
one out. Tabs tend to look like little arrows. And then paragraphs, a paragraph is what happens
when you hit the enter key. So every time you hit the enter key, you have created something that
is called a paragraph in the style sense. It is a paragraph level. So this is a concept you
have to get used to a little bit. There are different levels of these things, and it's important
to understand that. So a paragraph could mean a paragraph, or it could mean a heading,
or it could mean an item in a list, and so on. So there are a lot of things that are paragraph level.
So when you have selected that first button, where it says paragraph styles, that's what you're
getting. And so that's going to cover all of those things. It's going to cover your footnotes,
your end notes, all sorts of things. Now the next one is character styles. It may not be anything
you've thought of, particularly. But let's give, I'll take an example that comes from the Libra
Office documentation that I think makes it very clear. And imagine that you're a technical writer.
You have done a 200-page manual. And in your 200-page manual, you have at various places put in the
path for something. This file can be found at slash users, slash bin, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's
what we mean by path. And let's say in writing this 200-page document, you have consistently
used bold type for all of your paths. And then the editor comes back and says, I don't like that. Get rid of all that
bold. I want it to see, see all of that as a monospaced font instead.
Well, how does your weekend? Because you've got a lot of work now going through your 200-page
document manually changing every single one of those. But suppose you had understood character
styles, then you would have known that, ah, the way to do this is to create a style called
path. You name it whatever you want. It's really it's up to you. And then you could have
said it for bold or whatever it is you wanted to do. And then your editor comes back and says,
no, get rid of the bold, turn everything to a monospaced font. You would simply make a couple of
quick changes to the style. Presto change your whole document updates. So character styles are,
in fact, very useful. And that's something that you do want to get used to working with.
The next one is frame styles. Now, a frame is, in essence, a container within the document. And
that container is a rectangular box that could be holding text. It could be holding graphics.
Any, you know, basically anything you can put into a document, you can put into a frame.
But by having it within a specified box, it gives you some control over things. And, you know,
that's a good thing to have. So we'll at some point be talking about frame styles.
Then the next thing we have are page styles. And with page styles, what we're talking about are
the kind of properties that would affect the page like the size, the margins, what have you.
You know, I had an interesting discussion with Ken Fallon. We were talking about
something I had said in an earlier podcast about creating a template for letters. And he was
saying, well, you know, letters are different in Europe than they are in the US. And, you know,
paper sizes are different. And so we had a little discussion about what's the best way to handle
all of that. And I think one of the things that I would point out in this context is that having
different page styles could handle that. So you could have a page style that applied to, let's say,
a European A4 type of paper that you would use for a letter. And in the United States, you might
have your eight and a half by 11. You could have one for legal size, which in the US is eight and a half
by 14 and have a page style for that with, you know, specified margins and what have you.
So that page styles let you set all of that. Finally, we have list styles. List styles, as you
might expect, have to deal with lists that you might have in your document. Many of us use numbered
lists, bullet lists, things like that. Now, you might think, oh gosh, I need a style for that. I mean,
can't I just click the little button at the top that turns on and off the list and the answer is
yes, you can. But if you have ever had to deal with complex nested lists and trust me, I have,
you start to discover that trying to click those buttons on and off rarely delivers the result
that you really want to have. Particularly when you start trying to mix, you know, numbered lists with
sub lists that are nested and then you, you know, you go back up a level and it insists on continuing
the numbering from where you were before. So, you know, point one, sub point one, two, three,
point two and then you go to a sub point and it starts with four and you're there. I didn't want that.
It's supposed to start with one again. That's the kind of thing that you find happening very
frequently. So, there is a way to do this and it does involve list styles and in fact, you can do
some fairly interesting and complicated things there. So, that's something that we will probably take
a look at as well. Are you starting to get the sense this could turn into a really long series?
Well, you know, that's okay with me. So, this is the kind of the overview of styles. So, we've
talked about how to open up the style selectors, you know, to dock that style in formatting window
on the left and the other thing I want to mention in terms of the style selector is that there's
something at the top of the page. If you take a look with Libra Office writer, right above the styles
in formatting window, there's a drop down box. Now, my drop down box at the moment says heading one.
I just opened up a brand new document. So, if you remember from our discussion of templates and
the default template, I talked about how my workflow works. So, my brand new document has just opened
and I have heading one. I have my cursor in the middle of the page. Since I've turned on paragraph
marks, there's a paragraph mark right next to my blinking cursor. So, I've got everything ready
to go here. And if I wanted to change it from heading one to some other style, what I would have
to do is I'd have to click that drop down and I would have to take a look at one of the other styles
and I could turn it in the body text or something like that and it would automatically change. So,
that's the selector which is right above the styles in formatting that's docked on the left.
So, I think we've now done a pretty good job of introducing you to the concept of styles.
The next time what I want to do is I want to start getting into this in some detail and start
exploring how you start making use of these styles. So, I'm signing off for now. This is Ahuka
and again, Hacker Public Radio. Don't forget to support FreeSoftware and catch you later.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever consider recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital.Pound and the Infonomicum Computer Club.
HPR is funded by the binary revolution at binref.com. All binref projects are proudly sponsored by
Lina Pages. From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to LinaPages.com for all your hosting
needs. Unless otherwise stasis, today's show is released under a creative commons,
attribution, share a life, lead us our lives in stock.