Improvements needed

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JNiziurski
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Improvements needed

Post by JNiziurski »

I switched to Open Office (for Mac - version 4.1.1), and there's some serious differences between Word and Open Office.

As a graduate student, the hanging indent is nowhere near what it is supposed to be - can this be updated?

Additionally, I added a new "page style" to the format template, but it's mysteriously not there anymore. How do we remedy that? Any way to add a save option?

Is there anyway to also set this program as the default for Mac? I've been searching for that answer, and I cannot figure it out.
Mac os 10.10.3
Open Office version 4.1.1
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RoryOF
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by RoryOF »

JNiziurski wrote:I switched to Open Office (for Mac - version 4.1.1), and there's some serious differences between Word and Open Office.
OpenOffice is not, and does not purport to be, an MS Office clone, so differences are to be expected. If you wish to work only with an MS Office clone then you should consider acquiring MS Office.
JNiziurski wrote:As a graduate student, the hanging indent is nowhere near what it is supposed to be - can this be updated?.
What is the hanging indent supposed to do? We don't know what you think it should do, so need more information. With correct use of Paragraph Styles OpenOffice can readily indent and outdent. Know that you can specify a negative value for the spacing before the first line of a paragraph to cause it to extend left beyond the paragraph edges. You should be using (probably customised) paragraph styles rather than direct formatting.
JNiziurski wrote:Additionally, I added a new "page style" to the format template, but it's mysteriously not there anymore. How do we remedy that? Any way to add a save option?


Did you save the modified template? Details are given in [Tutorial] Creating a new default template The modified page style should continue to be available in the file in which you saved it, although it will not show up in new files until you go through the steps of modifying the default template.
JNiziurski wrote:Is there anyway to also set this program as the default for Mac? I've been searching for that answer, and I cannot figure it out.
I cannot answer with certainty for a Mac, but normally in other operating systems one finds a file of the desired type (say .odt), right clicks on it and selects the desired default program (in this case OpenOffice Writer) and chooses the option to "always open with this application".
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
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MrProgrammer
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Re: Improvements needed to your expectations

Post by MrProgrammer »

Hi, and welcome to the forum.
JNiziurski wrote:There's some serious differences between Microsnot Word and Open Office Writer
Writer is intended to be a high quality word processing program freely available to all. Anyone with sufficient interest and time can modify the operation of the program since all of the source code is freely available as well. Word is a high quality, but costly, word processing program which ties you to a specific company and cannot be modified except by Microsnot. But if Word better meets you needs, then buy it, of course.
JNiziurski wrote:Is there anyway to also set this program as the default for Mac
Setting the default program for MS Office formats - Mac

If this answered your question please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.
Mr. Programmer
AOO 4.1.7 Build 9800, MacOS 13.6.3, iMac Intel.   The locale for any menus or Calc formulas in my posts is English (USA).
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floris v
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by floris v »

As it happens, Hanging indent is one of the predefined standard paragraph styles of OpenOffice. You can probably adjust it to your needs. If it doesn't meet your demands, tell us what's missing instead of just leaving us guessing.
It's possible that your new page style was saved in your document instead of in the default template.
OpenOffice 4.1.11 on Ubuntu; LibreOffice 6.4 on Linux Mint, LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Ubuntu
If your problem has been solved or your question has been answered, please edit the first post in this thread and add [Solved] to the title bar.
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bent
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by bent »

I would like to weigh in on this problem. If it has been addressed sufficiently anywhere on the web, I have not yet found the discussion. An attachment is provided to further discuss the problem and demonstrate what I think is being asked for here. Briefly, we just need to know how one would go about creating the attached document in Open/Libre Office Write in the most efficient manner. We might settle for any manner whatsoever. We do not need to be told how arcane, complex, or unique our previous word processing paradigm is. We just need to know about what you have to offer. The attached document was created in Word Perfect X6, opened in Libre Office Write, then saved. I added a few lines to the end just to see if that paragraph was formatted properly to continue the sort of line wrapping we are talking about. It seemed to work fine.
Attachments
HangingIndent.odt
Sample indent expectation.
(65.45 KiB) Downloaded 413 times
LibreOffice 4.2.6.3 on Windows 7, Mint17, and Manjaro.
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floris v
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by floris v »

I checked how it's done in Word 2003, it's not much simpler than here, just another option to tick.
Right - the bad news is that OpenOffice works this way, and so does LibreOffice, and no amount of whining in this forum, which is not visited by the developers, is going to change that. If you want something to change, sign up at the developers' mailing list and post your complaint there. And then hope for the best.

I remember that WordPerfect had some great, and some terrible features. One very terrible thing about WP was that in WP 6 a completely new formatting paradigm was introduced, and that all documents made with WP 5 lost most of their formatting. On top of that the developers also discarded the macro language that came with WP 5.
End rant.

The only thing you can do here is study how the hanging indent is achieved in OpenOffice, and to find that out, all you have to do is open the styles list (press F11), right click the Hanging indent paragraph style, select Modify, select the Indents and spacings tab. Okay, that's a lot of work. You will see that to get a hanging indent, you have set a positive value for Before text and a negative value for First line. Then you can proceed to make a few paragraph styles with the required indents, and after that it's a matter of applying them where wanted. It will take more time for you than with WP, but that's because your finger tips still remember the mechanics of WP, and they still have to learn the mechanics of OpenOffice.
OpenOffice 4.1.11 on Ubuntu; LibreOffice 6.4 on Linux Mint, LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Ubuntu
If your problem has been solved or your question has been answered, please edit the first post in this thread and add [Solved] to the title bar.
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RoryOF
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by RoryOF »

Also, if you wish to change the formatting for a particular paragraph (which should be done usually on a one-off basis), simply place the cursor in that paragraph and choose /Format /Paragraph; you can change any parameter set there, which will apply only to the selected paragraph (not to all paragraphs using that style).
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acknak
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Re: Improvements needed

Post by acknak »

Also, the approach changes if you need a hanging indent for numbering and you want to use Writer's list auto-numbering and formatting. In that case, it's best to leave all the paragraph settings at zero and handle the hanging indent and left-side formatting through the list formatting.
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