[Solved] White Paper w/comments down the side

[Garoad]

I'd like to setup a sort of 'template' file that I can use for white papers that allows me to write the bulk of the text off to the side a little, leaving the left side open for occasional highlights and such. I've attached an example screenshot of what I'm talking about.

So far I've tried using two columns and using a table, but neither option works well. When I use a two column section, the text in the left column is inline with the bulk of the right side text. So if a change is made on one side or the other, it effects the opposite side. What I really want is to be able to modify both columns separately without having the text in the other column affected.

I also tried using a two column, one row table to do this, but it has the strange effect (even when I tell it to allow rows to 'break' on new pages) of either letting text go past the bottom of the page, never moving to the next page OR dropping the entire row down to the next page, leaving the previous one blank. I guess it's hard to describe..

Is there any way to do this reasonably conveniently?

[aukejan]

Have you tried inserting (text) frames? You can create a macro that creates one formatted and positioned properly and include that in your template.

[SharonB]

In MS Word you can achieve this effect with comments. I don't know if OpenOffice Writer has this feature.

Sharon

[aukejan]

Insert > Note ?? Is that similar?

[Hagar Delest]

Notes are rather for collaborative work. What you need here is indeed text frames (menu Insert>Frame) if you need such "clean" comments to be kept with the final text. Change the margins to make some room and add text frames anchored to the paragraph and not to the page, so that it moves with the related text.

Note that text in frames have a specific style, very easy to change their appearance all at once.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[acknak]

It seems like this would be handled fairly well using text frames for the notes in the margin. Writer comes with a predefined frame style that does this, named "Marginalia". You type the note text, select it, then Insert > Frame, then select the frame and apply the Marginalia frame style.

In order to clear the area where the notes appear, you need to indent all the paragraphs in the running text. You can do that by changing the "Before Text" spacing to somewhere between 1.6 and 2 inches--enough to leave room for the notes at the left. Since many of Writer's pre-defined styles inherit their "Before Text" spacing from the "Default" style, you can change the setting in one place to cover most of the situations.

Alternatively, you can change the page margins and position the notes outside the left margin. You then have to use a negative "Before" space for the header and/or footer to span the full width of the page.

Here's a sample page that uses the first approach:

[Garoad]

This is awesome thanks for the responses.

I think I'm pretty close to what I need now. The marginalia approach seems to work except for one trouble - if you hit delete at the beginning of a paragraph the whole scheme gets out of whack, and the entire paragraph loses it's margin. There doesn't seem to be a way of getting it back the way it was before, short of hitting undo. I would use this approach, but I don't want to have to worry about strange things like that happening while I'm writing. The last thing I want to be thinking about when writing is how to get the format to cooperate.

The other suggestion of inserting frames and setting a large left margin seems to work more reliably. BUT with that approach I'm having a problem with the footer. I was able to get the header to stretch across the page by setting a negative "before text" setting, but the footer is different because I used a 3 column "section" to display revision #, page #, and date in the footer. Setting a negative before text value for the footer using that method doesn't want to cooperate. It doesn't display the middle column text at all, although the left column text does go where it should.
Example should be attached

[Garoad]

Hah, somehow I managed to do it, I think. Instead of setting the negative before text setting on the footer, I set it on the "section" that I added to the footer. I think this will work! Attached the final example in case anyone is interested in the solution.

[Hagar Delest]

No need to use a section for your footer. Use the Footer paragraph style properties and set a negative indent to that paragraph style, that's all.
See:

White Paper Template - Hagar.odt

(9.79 KiB) Downloaded 399 times

[acknak]

The marginalia approach seems to work except for one trouble - if you hit delete at the beginning of a paragraph the whole scheme gets out of whack, and the entire paragraph loses it's margin.

Sorry, I'm not seeing that. I don't doubt that it's happening, I'd just like to understand how it happens. Can you explain where the cursor is and what key you're pressing to cause things to get out of whack?

[Garoad]

Hmm, if I put the cursor at exactly the beginning of a paragraph (before the first letter in the first word) and hit delete, this happens. Put the cursor in front of the C in Cryptology and hit delete, if that doesn't do it, something is different...

Maybe we are running different versions? I have 2.4.0

[acknak]

Maybe we are running different versions? I have 2.4.0

Sorry, I missed that.

Yes, the behavior of Writer when deleting at the paragraph boundary was changed for OOo 3--it is much improved in recent versions.

Thanks for the follow-up!