[Solved] Background Color (with page breaks?)

[asherblackfoot]

Hi - I am not very strong with computers so I appreciate any help in advance.

I am trying to compile a document to be published as a book which starts with a grey background, then alternates odd and even pages, (even is red, odd is blue), and finally ends with two pages filled each with a jpg.

I had two files - one grey - and another file the colored second half. When I tried pasting the colored onto the grey I got a lot of grey pages in the second part.
Am I supposed to redo the second half now that they are combined? I am having trouble with this.
What page breaks do I use and where?
Or do I need to use styles?

Or if there is some way to change the whole second file into a jpg (from odt) then tack it on maybe that would be good, but I don't know how.

Thanks again for your help.

[jrkrideau]

Hi - I am not very strong with computers so I appreciate any help in advance.

I am trying to compile a document to be published as a book which starts with a grey background, then alternates odd and even pages, (even is red, odd is blue), and finally ends with two pages filled each with a jpg.

]

Is the main part of the document written in AOO?

I had two files - one grey - and another file the colored second half. When I tried pasting the colored onto the grey I got a lot of grey pages in the second part.

This is a bit hard to visualise. Any chance of uploading an example? There is an upload attachment tab at the bottom of the Reply and the Quote windows.

Am I supposed to redo the second half now that they are combined? I am having trouble with this.

Dump it, I doubt it is salvageable.. I think you need to do some earlier planning and setting up some pre-planned formats before you even think about combining those two files.

What page breaks do I use and where?

Cannot even make a guess without an example. At the moment it is not even clear that you need page breaks.

Or do I need to use styles?

With AOO it is not a case of "do I". You really need to use Styles for everything you do.

Off the top of my head, it sounds like you need one Page Style for the grey colour and then a Right and Left Page Style for the rest of the document.

I'd create a new page style called Grey with the grey background. Then modify the Right and Left Page Styles to red and blue backgrounds.

I think the real problem is the question "Is the text continuous within the red and blue pages or is each page independent of the one before or after. Is everything on the red and blue pages one Dickens' novel or do we have situation where the first red page is a Kipling poem and the first blue page is a Yeats poem and so on where each page is independent ? I hope this makes some sense.

Or if there is some way to change the whole second file into a jpg (from odt) then tack it on maybe that would be good, but I don't know how.

Possible but I doubt it. Sounds pretty dicey to me.

My impression is that you want a book where the front matter (loosely defined) has a grey background and the main body of the text alternate red and blue. Let's not worry about the jpegs at the end. They are likely the easiest thing to do.

[asherblackfoot]

Thank you for your response.
The document is not a continuous text in the way I novel is; you're right it's poetry.
I think I'll upload a text after I try to implement some changes.

Thank you for your time.

[floris v]

Okay, the following is not a poem, keep to the letter of the instructions.

Put the cursor at the bottom of the lasts page before the switch to red and blue pages, that's to say, to the right of the last character or letter on that page, so that arrow right will take you to the next page. At that point, do Insert - Manual break, select Page break and select Left page from the list box.
Press F11, click the fourth icon from the left, right click Left page, click the background tab, set the color you want, same for Right page.
Put the cursor at the bottom of the 3rd last page and again Insert - Manual break, Page break, now select Default style.

That should fix it for your file.

[asherblackfoot]

Hi Floris,
thanks. I assigned a left page break but when I hit F11 and pressed that icon there was no left page listed - its a style right? There wasn't anything there. I also tried right clicking at that point but found no such styles.

[RoryOF]

Try changing the dropdown in the bottom bar of Styles and Formatting (F11) to "All". Make sure you press 4th icon from left in that window.

Be aware that type (in particular Blue, but also many other colours) on a red background can cause perception difficulties with the 5-10% of males who suffer from colour recognition difficulties.

[asherblackfoot]

hmm, okay that brings up styles, but when I tried to implement the first half turned red (left page) but I wanted it grey.
Also I might as well ask now as to the other parts of Floris' instruction.
1. when I break left it pushes the next page, (the first left page), over one. Should I just bring it back after I apply the style to left?
2. when I break right is that at the bottom of the first left page?
3. Floris said, "Put the cursor at the bottom of the 3rd last page and again Insert - Manual break, Page break, now select Default style." what is the 3rd last page?

Thank you Rory and Floris and jkrideau

[floris v]

hmm, okay that brings up styles, but when I tried to implement the first half turned red (left page) but I wanted it grey.
Also I might as well ask now as to the other parts of Floris' instruction.
1. when I break left it pushes the next page, (the first left page), over one. Should I just bring it back after I apply the style to left?
2. when I break right is that at the bottom of the first left page?
3. Floris said, "Put the cursor at the bottom of the 3rd last page and again Insert - Manual break, Page break, now select Default style." what is the 3rd last page?

Thank you Rory and Floris and jkrideau

Re 1: I could have been more precise there. I suppose that you want to start the green and red pages on a left page so that you have pairs. If the first can follow after a gray page, you can switch to Right page at that page break.
Re 2: It's at the bottom of the last gray page.
Re 3: It's right before the first of the last two pages, so immediately after the last poem. See attached example.

coloredpages.odt

(9.33 KiB) Downloaded 130 times

[asherblackfoot]

ok Floris - thanks I'll try that. Thanks for your patience.

[asherblackfoot]

Hey thanks everyone.
Floris I tried your tips again and it worked. Thanks very much.



I'm going to post a new question about how to give the footnote margins without changing the page background (color).

[John_Ha]

Page Styles, Page Breaks and Page Number are an attribute of the first paragraph on a page even if it is empty or a Heading (or a table at the very top). Note that Heading means a Heading 1 or a Heading 2 etc, and not a Page header as in header/footer.

You can manually insert and delete Page Breaks, manually choose the next Page Style, and manually change the Page Number, by placing the cursor in the first paragraph and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks ... (or the table, and going Table > Properties > Text Flow...) where all these options can be changed.

When you Insert > Manual Break > Page Break..., the small pop-up window allows you to choose the Page Style for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break; and also the option to change the Page Number for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break.

You can also delete Page Breaks by Backspace, or by deleting highlighted text which includes the Page Break.

It is very useful to make Page Breaks visible by Tools > Options (Preferences on Mac) > OpenOffice > Appearance > scroll to Text document > tick Section boundaries > choose a colour for Page and column breaks. Page Breaks now show on the screen as a thin coloured line and identify where the problem lies. This is the default setting on recent installations where the Page Break appears as a thin blue line.

A word of caution. You can go Format > Page ..., and edit the format of the page in which the cursor is placed. However, you are actually editing that page's Page Style, so all other pages which use that same Page Style will also have their formats changed.

You can get more information on Page Styles, Page Breaks and Page Numbering in Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages of the Writer Manual.

[asherblackfoot]

Hi
the full document was too big probably because it had a couple images, but I included here most of the document.
The first part is meant to be grey, the second part has alternating red and blue pages.
I need to adjust the margins of the footnotes without affecting the background colors.
Also it would be good if I could define a margin at the top of each page.

Thanks for any tips and advice.
If this is impossible, end notes may be an option.

[floris v]

A few hints:
- Ctrl+Enter will insert a page break, and that's much better than pressing Enter a lot, because if you change the page size you can start all over again getting your pages right.
- Use styles instead of direct formatting.

[RoryOF]

A partial answer: in /Format /Styles and formatting, press first button from left, right click on Footnote, Choose Modify from the popup. Press Indents and Spacing tab and adjust Space before and Space after settings to about 3cm each . You'll need to fiddle with these to get them to your liking. Adjust First line to something like -0.5 cm, or as you choose.

Edit: Work on a copy file in case you don't like the results.

[Bill]

A few hints:
- Ctrl+Enter will insert a page break, and that's much better than pressing Enter a lot, because if you change the page size you can start all over again getting your pages right.
- Use styles instead of direct formatting.

I totally agree. Using multiple Enters to move to the next page also causes problems when font substitutions are made when the document is opened on a computer which doesn't have the specified fonts installed. Font substitutions are being made on my system in both Linux and Windows and the document layout is different in OpenOffice and LibreOffice, but in both cases the poems are not starting on a new page.

[asherblackfoot]

Yes hi. Thanks for your help, but when I went to format and styles and modified the footnote it only affected some. On a given page some were not indented.
Any advice?
Thanks.

[Bill]

You need to apply the Footnote style to ALL of the footnotes. The Default style has been applied to some of them. Modifying the Footnote style will have no effect on the footnotes with the Default style.

[RoryOF]

Your document, as has been noted by several posters in this thread, uses much direct formatting; OpenOffice is Style based and a formatted document is much easier to produce using Styles systematically than using Direct Formatting.

In the case that one uses a style for some text, and then modifies that style, the change is applied to all instances of that style. This is the power of styles. However, when one locally overrides a style by changing the attributes of the text to which that style is applied, this Direct Formatting is taken as dominant by OpenOffice and any change in the definition of that Style is not applied to the text you have changed. A brief(ish) introduction to using styles is in
Writer for students (several languages)

To remove Direct Formatting from an area of text one has to select it and then press Ctrl M. With such a selection, one can apply a chosen style by selecting the target style from the styles dropdown in the formatting bar, or by double clicking the target style in the Stylist, which is displayed by /Format /Styles ad Formatting, or F11 key.

Transferring from other (more direct formatting oriented) word processors, my experience was that I needed to prepare and format three reasonably sized projects to become familiar with OO and its use of Styles. I now would not move back to such previous word processors and document layout systems, being able to do what I require using OpenOffice..

[anros]

Hello, So I have grouped together 2 sets of fontwork, problem is, the only colour options there seem to be are changing the outline and changing the primary colour of the text, which means the group has a white box behind it. Is there a way to change this background? Cheers