[Solved] How to correctly anchor the language in a template
Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:47 pm
Just a question: I often work with documents that have to be published in multiple languages. I have prepared a template for each language and it contains some 30 styles for paragraph layouts, character attributes and frames. Except for a couple of things like boiler plate text and special paragraph formats for caption enumerations all language specific versions are the same. What I am looking for is the right place to define the default language for all paragraph and character styles. The idea is to take the English template, copy it to a new file, then set the language in a single style from English (US) to some other language and be mostly done with the conversion of the template.
I tried the Default paragraph style as a starting point and have all other paragraph styles "derive" from it, i.e. link in a tree like fashion to "Default". That works nicely so far, but what can I do about character styles? They can somehow not be based on the "Default" character styles, complaining about a recursive definition. The "Default" character style seems to behave a little strange anyhow. For example, right-clicking on it shows only "New.." in the popup, not "Modify". And trying to link any other character style to it will say: "Style cannot be based on this style, because this would mean a recursive reference".
Connected with that question: How do I say in a paragraph style, that it should assume the same language setting as the one it is linked to, i.e. its parent style? If I select "[none]", I assume this means "no language at all" and that's not what I want. If I select the same language as the parent style, does Writer automatically conclude that this means "same language as parent" and change the language automatically, when the parent changes?
Last question with regard to that: When I reformat a text selection by Format->Default Formatting or Ctrl-Shift-Space the language of this selection remains unmodified and is not set to paragraph's default language. Is there a way to tell Writer to reset a selection to the paragraph's default language?
Thanks your help. Sorry to come up with simple questions like that, but I didn't find any hints in the documentation for these subjects.
OpenOffice 2.4
Win2K
Intel
I tried the Default paragraph style as a starting point and have all other paragraph styles "derive" from it, i.e. link in a tree like fashion to "Default". That works nicely so far, but what can I do about character styles? They can somehow not be based on the "Default" character styles, complaining about a recursive definition. The "Default" character style seems to behave a little strange anyhow. For example, right-clicking on it shows only "New.." in the popup, not "Modify". And trying to link any other character style to it will say: "Style cannot be based on this style, because this would mean a recursive reference".
Connected with that question: How do I say in a paragraph style, that it should assume the same language setting as the one it is linked to, i.e. its parent style? If I select "[none]", I assume this means "no language at all" and that's not what I want. If I select the same language as the parent style, does Writer automatically conclude that this means "same language as parent" and change the language automatically, when the parent changes?
Last question with regard to that: When I reformat a text selection by Format->Default Formatting or Ctrl-Shift-Space the language of this selection remains unmodified and is not set to paragraph's default language. Is there a way to tell Writer to reset a selection to the paragraph's default language?
Thanks your help. Sorry to come up with simple questions like that, but I didn't find any hints in the documentation for these subjects.
OpenOffice 2.4
Win2K
Intel