[Solved] Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

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EdIsenberg
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Location: Central New Mexico, USA

[Solved] Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by EdIsenberg »

I have a series of bullet paragraph where the interparagraph spacing is weird. Here's the image:
Bullet paragraphs without control of paragraph spacing.jpg
Note the large amount of spacing between bullet items, despite the style for those paragraphs (FoP Bullets) having only 0.02" spacing after. If I remove the spacing then there is absolutely no spacing between them. There doesn't seem to be a way to find a happy middle ground.

In another thread about the same subject, acknak wrote:
The best way to get consistent, manageable formatting in OO is to use styles exclusively. Once you start using direct formatting (toolbars, Format > Paragraph > ...) it can be difficult to straighten out.

At any rate, the usual culprit with uneven spacing in bullet lists comes from the bullet symbols. OO Writer often uses a different font for the bullet symbol and the symbol font is slightly larger than the text font and thus changes the line spacing. A bullet can also be scaled, so its size may simply be larger than the text line height.

[snip]

Here's the best approach I know of to cleaning up list formatting:
Select all the list items
Turn off the bullets (click the toolbar button, maybe twice, until the bullets are off)
Turn on the bullets (click the toolbar button once)
I have followed all of acknak's advice. I would happily use a slightly smaller bullet if that would help, but I know of no way to scale it as he suggests. I tried selecting everything from the end of the preceding paragraph through to the 1st word of the 2nd paragraph, and changing the font size, but nothing changed.

There has to be a solution, as I can't believe anyone would want the choice of either no spacing or too much spacing.

If you need I can upload the part of the actual document. That's possible because in this case the material is right up front. When the material in question is well inside the document, I always have a problem. It's part of a large novel (377 pages) which I do not want to allow everyone to download (no offense to anyone). When I copy just the important part to a new document, I lose the styles from the old document. If someone could explain how to clone all the styles to a new document without copying the entire file and then deleting all the text except the part that is important, I'd really love that.

Ed
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged [Solved].
Edward D. Isenberg
MS Windows 10
OOo 4.1.2
LibreOffice 5.2.7.2
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robleyd
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Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by robleyd »

Perhaps this entry from the AOO Wiki will answer your question on duplicating styles.

You may find a lot of other useful information in the Wiki.
Cheers
David
OS - Slackware 15 64 bit
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
LibreOffice 24.2.1.2; SlackBuild for 24.2.1 by Eric Hameleers
EdIsenberg
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Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 6:19 am
Location: Central New Mexico, USA

Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by EdIsenberg »

I've decided to upload the document here. Saves time.
FoP-The Guardians TEST Bullet Problem.odt
(89.43 KiB) Downloaded 188 times
Edward D. Isenberg
MS Windows 10
OOo 4.1.2
LibreOffice 5.2.7.2
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acknak
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Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by acknak »

The extra space seems to be coming from the (paragraph) > Indents & Spacing > Register True > Activate: YES setting. If I change the FoP Bullets style to turn that off, the extra space goes away.
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Bill
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Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by Bill »

acknak wrote:The extra space seems to be coming from the (paragraph) > Indents & Spacing > Register True > Activate: YES setting. If I change the FoP Bullets style to turn that off, the extra space goes away.
I agree. Register True is activated to keep lines of text aligned on both sides of a book page. If any space is added below a paragraph, that space will cause misalignment of the text on the front and back of pages unless the space is increased to a multiple of the full line height.
AOO 4.1.14 on Ubuntu MATE 22.04
EdIsenberg
Posts: 83
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 6:19 am
Location: Central New Mexico, USA

Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by EdIsenberg »

Thanks for the help. Changing to REGISTER TRUE | ACTIVATE = NO did help with a lot of issues, but I still have many places where that setting is correct and the spacing is inconsistent. I'm able to live with it because at this point I have to decide which are the most important things to do.

I very much appreciate your help. I'm sorry I ask for it so often. :(

Ed
Edward D. Isenberg
MS Windows 10
OOo 4.1.2
LibreOffice 5.2.7.2
staffwriter
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Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:46 am

Re: Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing

Post by staffwriter »

EdIsenberg wrote:I've decided to upload the document here. Saves time.
FoP-The Guardians TEST Bullet Problem.odt
I don't know if you intended to post the document you did, Ed, which appears to be the title page from your book "The Guardians," followed by pages of your dedications. :)

Whereas, I was under the impression that you were going to offer a download containing a solution for this problem: "Bullet paragraphs with no control over spacing." :?: --which would be much appreciated.

--staffwriter
Windows 10
OpenOffice 4.1.10 on Windows 10
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