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Setting Chapter Number/other content in Headers/Footers

Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:55 pm
by ZL Brown
I waited several years before attempting to write my first book using OpenOffice because I knew the learning curve would be steep. Sorry to say even after reviewing both the Writer Guide and the "Writer" section in the Getting Started Guide, I'm still no closer to understanding exactly how to compile a book in OpenOffice (v3.3) Writer with no "hickups", but I think I'm starting to improve my learning curve somewhat despite still having some problems, specifically entering sequecial chapter number, chapter name and book title in headers and footers, appropriately.

Problem 1 - Entering a sequential Chapter Number in a Header.

According to the Writer Guide, you can use the INSERT>FIELD>OTHER>Chapter Number field to enter the chapter number in the HEADER of the first page to a chapter. This doesn't seem to work very efficiently for me, however. When I create the Master Document, the "Chapter 1" header appears in every chapter, not just the first chapter. How do I resolve this problem? If I manually change the chapter number of the 2nd and succeeding chapters, each chapter takes on the chapter number entered no matter which chapter I try to change. Am I using the wrong "heading" (paragraph) style?

Problem 2 - Entering the Book Title in the header on alternating "left and right" pages.

I think I may have stumbled upon resolving this problem in the first chapter of my book (as it is pulled into the Master Document anyway), but I couldn't for the life of me tell you how I did it. If someone who better understands how to do this could explain it in a simple manner, I would be enternally grateful. For the record, I DO NOT want the book title to appear neither in the header or footer of the first page of any chapter. I just want it to appear in the header of the 2nd and succeeding pages in alternating right/left headers. The first page of each chapter will have the chapter number only as its header.

Problem 3 - Entering the Chapter number and Title in the footer on alternating "left and right" pages with the page number.

I haven't quite figured this one out yet; I'm still ironing out the kinks. One thing I was able to get right was entering the page number in the footer on alternating pages and having it appear sequentially throughout the rest of the book. I did run into one problem, however. I need to restart the page number from the "front matter" of the book, i.e., the title page, copyright page, TOC and Preface, and restart the page numbering beginning from "1" from the first-page of Chapter 1 throughout the rest of the book. I managed to get the page numbering to appear in the footer beginning with the "Preface", but the numbering starts at "iii" which isn't what I want. I want the Preface to start at page number "ii" (or whatever is the next number immediately following the last page of the TOC).

I did discover that it is possible to disply the title of a document (i.e., book title or chapter title) in the header or footer using the "Properties" dialog box. To do so:

Select FILE>PROPERTIES
Click on the DECRIPTIONS tab
Enter the title either on the "Title" line or "Subject" line

(Note: Although you can split the text appropriately to identify the chapter details in the "Properties" dialog box, you can enter the complete chapter number and title string in either the title line or subject line to get the same result, i.e., "Chapter 1" with a placeholder (a dash - for example) in the "Title" line and chapter title in the "Subject" line.)

The resulting text would display as "Chapter 1 - [chapter title]". For me, this information displays in the "footer" but only on the right-pages, not the left. I suspect this is because the properties only affect the first page of the document. Therefore, the problem is how to enter the chapter number and chapter title in a header or footer on alternating right and left pages throughout the chapter?

Expanding my learning curve - my "guesses" at possible solutions.

I've tried to figure this stuff out on my own by reading the guides and reviewing this forum, but sometimes you have to know when to cry "UNCLE" and ask for help. So, I'm screaming UNCLE here Writer gurus. I think my problems are as follows:

Problem 1: I've read in several forum entries where the solution seems to rest with using "Header 1" as the primary header for the chapter number/title on the lead (first) chapter page and using "Heading 2" for all subsequent "right-pages" and "Heading 3" for all subsequent "left-pages". But wouldn't this require creating two more templates and setting up your page styles appropriately for each? (BTW, creating and using "Templates" also confuses me; more on that later as problem #4).

Problem 2: I think I hinted at a possible solution when I addressed "Templates" above. Would you have to create a separate template for your "chapter main page", "right-page" and "left-page" or can you use the "first-page, right-page and left-page" styles to accomplish this? If so, why not mention this in the "Creating and Using Templates" section of the guides? It would really cut down on confusion where using templates to create books are concerned. As I understand the guide in using a template as the basis for creating a lengthy document, you setup all "attributes", i.e., header, footer, chapter number, book and chapter titles, paragraph indents with and without bullet entries and page numbers, using the appropriate paragraph styles. But here's where I'm confused: Shouldn't you determine which "page style" to use first and THEN pick the other attributes that will eventually appear on the page for your document? According to the Writer guide, since "Styles" are mentioned first, specifically paragraph styles in Section 6 (Chapter 7 outlines how to apply same), the logic is that you can start working in a document (even if said document is used as your "template") by applying paragraph styles first and page styles second. But from what I've experienced, unless you know how your pages will flow for large documents (4 or more pages where the page/section title and/or pages numbering needs to change), you should establish which page styles you want to use before working on formatting your paragraph styles. Or does it matter? Can you establish all relevent "styles" on the same document/template but then plug in the appriopriate styles as you prepare (type) the document/sections? If so, the authors to the "Template" and "Style" guides need to make this much clearer because it's one of those "who came first: the chicken or the egg" type questions that never truly seem to get resolved unless you've become more familiar with using Writer.

Problem 3: This problem likely can be resolved once the "one template or first, right- and left- page page styles" question is answered, but I suspect you'd have to also setup three different paragraph styles as headers or footers, appropriately, to capture the chapter number, chapter title and book title and combine them in the appropriate header(heading) or footer(footing).

Problem 4 -Templates: As stated above, this feature is confusing. Although I managed to create each chapter of my book based on the initial document layout, the "template" I used isn't a Template per Writer's configuration because it doesn't appear in the "Template" folder. But surprisingly, it does work! The "Creating a Template" guide does a decent job explaining how to create a template, however, it doesn't quite explain how all the paragraph and page styles would translate into the actually document. For example, although I can add a header to a template to a document, their styles don't transfer over into the "Styles and Formatting" dialog box as permanent reusable features. Therefore, you either have to base all documents off the same template or "load" each style for the specific template used which I've discovered doesn't work very well. (Or maybe that's part of my learning curve I'm still struggling with.)

I'm very close to putting my first book together. I would hate to scrap it and start over, but if the solution is to create separate templates for each type of page that goes into the book (i.e., title page, copyright page, TOC, Preface, Chapter 1st-page, 2nd-page and a "Next" page to cover the succeeding pages), and using or modifying preset page and paragraph styles from the "Styles and Formatting" dialog box and placing everything in a single template, I think clarifying the exact process to do this for large documents would be greatly appreciated by all users of OpenOffice Writer. It's a powerful program, but also very confusing.

Re: Setting Chapter Number/other content in Headers/Footers

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:28 am
by floris v
Try Tutorial on Page styles and headers/footers. It covers most of your questions. As to the first Problem # 1, you have to link a paragraph style to the level 1 category in Tools - Outline numbering (Heading 1 is the most sensible one). So if you link Heading 1 to that level and turn on chapter numbering, and use Heading 1 for your chapter titles, your chapter number field in the header should work fine.

Re: Setting Chapter Number/other content in Headers/Footers

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:07 pm
by ZL Brown
I'm still having problems "constructing" my book in a Master Document even after reading the linked "Page Styles, Headers/Footers" tutorial. But I think I'm beginning to better understand how OoWriter works where page and paragraph styles are concerned. I'm still trying to bend the learning curve, but I'd like to think I'm beginning to make alittle progress. The following details the steps I've taken in an effort to bring my book project together.

Initially, each chapter was typed individually without a specific page style to differentiate the lead "chapter page" from the second and succeeding pages (or the other parts of the book for that matter). After reading more on Oo3.3, I created a chapter template based on the original page/paragraph styles of Chapter 1 which is loosely structured as follows:

Template structure
Page Style - Lead chapter page (first page of each chapter; right facing page. Next Page: Chap Left Page)
Paragraph styles:
- Header: Chapter number using Heading 1 linked to Numbering 1 for auto sequencial numbering of each new chapter starting at "1".
- Footer: Footer Left for chapter title name; Page number field (right-hand corner)

Page Style - Chap Left page (2nd pg; left facing pages. Next page style: Chap Right Page)
Paragraph styles:
- Header: Header Left contains the word "Chapter" followed by the book title which also contains a dash (-) as a separator between the chapter number and the book title. (Example: "Chapter [#] - [Book Title]"; See Note 1 below for details)
- Footer: Footer Right for chapter title name (See Note 2 below for details); Page number field (left-hand cornder)

Page Style - Chap Right page (3rd pg; right facing pages. Next page style: Chap Left Page)
- Header: Header right (formated the same as Header Left on the Left page style)
- Footer: Footer Left for chapter title name; Page number field (right-hand corner)

Custom paragraph styles (i.e., topic headings, subheadings, paragraph indents and numbering of specific paragraph content) are used in the body of each chapter.

Note 1: The left and right headers on the second and subsequent pages of each chapter are populated using INSERT>FIELD>TITLE. The book title name is entered in the FILE>PROPERTIES>Description "title" field.

Note 2: The left and right footers on all chapter pages are populated using INSERT>FIELD>SUBJECT. The chapter name is entered in the FILE>PROPERTIES>Description "subject" field.

The rest of the book is constructed as follows:

Page styles (no definiative paragraph styles on Title or Copyright pages):
Title Page w/linked image
Copyright page
Preface page
- Page Style - Preface (1st page); Default page (2nd pages; see "Default page" below)
- Header: contains "Preface" - Centered
- Footer: Page number field starting at page "i" (right-hand corner)
Default page (Here's where things get confusing)
- Page Style - Default (mirrored)
- Header: (Unknown; See details below)
- Footer: Page number field (starts in left-hand cornder but alternates left to right)

Interesting occurance: The Preface document itself is only a single page, but when it is merged into the Master Document, it is forced onto two pages. The second page of the Preface uses the "Default" page style and properly displays the page number on each page ("i and ii", appropriately) and the left heading which in this case is the title of the book w/o the chapter and its corresponding number.

Problems:

1. Before establishing the "Lead Chap, LeftChap and RightChap" page styles, the second page of each chapter when pulled into the Master Document would display the heading from the 2nd-page of the "Preface" page and number the pages per chapter consecutively. As to the heading, unless I've missed my guess I believe this was because I was also using a "Default" page style as the 2nd and subsequent pages for each chapter before changing to three separate page styles. Until then, only the 2nd page of each chapter would display a left heading, the page number in the left-hand corner of the footer and the chapter title in the right-hand corner of the footer. All other pages contained blank headers and footers. I'm still not sure if I've conquered my page formatting problem because despite my efforts the headers and footers still don't populate correctly.

2. I'm still struggling with populating the chapter header on the first page of each chapter. I want the chapter number to appear centered on the first page of each chapter in sequential order (i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc., etc.). The number "1" appears in the header of each chapter as standalone documents, but when I pull the chapters into the Master Document, the header is blank.

I really don't want to start from scratch. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Note: I haven't put together my TOC or Index mainly because I haven't been able to resolve my other formatting/structural problems.

Re: Setting Chapter Number/other content in Headers/Footers

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:28 pm
by floris v
You can use one page style for left and right pages if you remove the check mark in Same content left/right on the Header and Footer tab. You do have to populate left and right headers/footers yourself, of course. When you work with master documents (maybe you should first try your luck with a single document with several chapters to get the hang of how styles work before you attempt master documents), remember that the style definitions in the master document override the definitions in the sub documents. So if you don't populate the headers and footers in your styles in the master document, you won't see any content there, even if you populate them in the sub documents.

Re: Setting Chapter Number/other content in Headers/Footers

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:49 pm
by ZL Brown
floris v wrote:When you work with master documents (maybe you should first try your luck with a single document with several chapters to get the hang of how styles work before you attempt master documents), remember that the style definitions in the master document override the definitions in the sub documents. So if you don't populate the headers and footers in your styles in the master document, you won't see any content there, even if you populate them in the sub documents.
My initial plan was to draft my book in single document. However, after reading about the ease of editing individual chapters through the Master Document, I thought I'd give that a try. But the way things are going, I may go back to Plan A (single long document) and leave Plan B (merge individual book components (i.e., chapters) into a master document) alone. It just seems more complicated than it's worth.

I'll post back in a few days and let you know how things turned out.