Creating custom drawing shapes

[aaronkrerowicz]

I'm working on the interior of an 8.5" x 8.5" paperback book titled "Flip Side Beatles". I want the background of each page to be a photo of a vinyl record sleeve, with the text wrapping around the center hole of that sleeve. I can easily get rectangular boxes (see my "blocky" illustration), and I figured out how to manually draw the custom shape I want (see the "manual" illustration). I also see how I could manually align the custom shape using the "edit points", but that seems like it would take HOURS. Is there any easier way to get the custom shape I'm seeking? I'm using OpenOffice 3 on Windows 10.
Thanks in advance,
Aaron

[hubert lambert]

Hi,

You need to do a "shape substraction".
Draw your rectangle, then draw a circle with the diameter of the notch and move it onto the rectangle. Select both shapes, right-click on selection and choose Shapes -> Substract:

Regards.

[aaronkrerowicz]

Yes! That's exactly what I'm seeking! However, when I right click, I don't see any option for "Shapes -> subtract".

[RoryOF]

The previous instructions are for Draw.

[Zizi64]

However, when I right click, I don't see any option for "Shapes -> subtract".

Use the Draw application. You must select the rectangle and the circle in same time. Right click on the selected objects and then:

Then you can copy/paste the object into an another application.

My picture is from the LibreOffice 4.4.7

[RoryOF]

I think you can do this in Writer: draw the rectangle. Then draw a half circle; select the half circle, set area to white and line to none (from the right click popup) Then select both items, right click and group.

I haven't worked through these steps in detail.

[aaronkrerowicz]

Aha! Yes, I see. Thank you all so much

[acknak]

You might consider using a circle shape anchored to a page header or footer. Writer will wrap text around the shape, and the header/footer will provide the same shape automatically on each page.