[Solved] How to correctly anchor the language in a template

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norbvor
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Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:42 am

[Solved] How to correctly anchor the language in a template

Post by norbvor »

Just a question: I often work with documents that have to be published in multiple languages. I have prepared a template for each language and it contains some 30 styles for paragraph layouts, character attributes and frames. Except for a couple of things like boiler plate text and special paragraph formats for caption enumerations all language specific versions are the same. What I am looking for is the right place to define the default language for all paragraph and character styles. The idea is to take the English template, copy it to a new file, then set the language in a single style from English (US) to some other language and be mostly done with the conversion of the template.

I tried the Default paragraph style as a starting point and have all other paragraph styles "derive" from it, i.e. link in a tree like fashion to "Default". That works nicely so far, but what can I do about character styles? They can somehow not be based on the "Default" character styles, complaining about a recursive definition. The "Default" character style seems to behave a little strange anyhow. For example, right-clicking on it shows only "New.." in the popup, not "Modify". And trying to link any other character style to it will say: "Style cannot be based on this style, because this would mean a recursive reference".

Connected with that question: How do I say in a paragraph style, that it should assume the same language setting as the one it is linked to, i.e. its parent style? If I select "[none]", I assume this means "no language at all" and that's not what I want. If I select the same language as the parent style, does Writer automatically conclude that this means "same language as parent" and change the language automatically, when the parent changes?

Last question with regard to that: When I reformat a text selection by Format->Default Formatting or Ctrl-Shift-Space the language of this selection remains unmodified and is not set to paragraph's default language. Is there a way to tell Writer to reset a selection to the paragraph's default language?

Thanks your help. Sorry to come up with simple questions like that, but I didn't find any hints in the documentation for these subjects.

OpenOffice 2.4
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Intel
Last edited by norbvor on Wed Jul 02, 2008 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: How to correctly anchor the language in a template

Post by Hagar Delest »

norbvor wrote:How do I say in a paragraph style, that it should assume the same language setting as the one it is linked to, i.e. its parent style? If I select "[none]", I assume this means "no language at all" and that's not what I want. If I select the same language as the parent style, does Writer automatically conclude that this means "same language as parent" and change the language automatically, when the parent changes?
No (for last question). In fact you've to check the first tab (Organizer)of the style properties. In the lower area, it lists all the changes compared to the parent style. If you don't change the language, OOo assumes it the same as the parent one. If you change it, it will be shown in the Organizer tab. To cancel such modification, in the related tab, hit the Standard button.
norbvor wrote:Last question with regard to that: When I reformat a text selection by Format->Default Formatting or Ctrl-Shift-Space the language of this selection remains unmodified and is not set to paragraph's default language. Is there a way to tell Writer to reset a selection to the paragraph's default language?
It should revert to the paragraph style language but that style can be different from the Default one. So if your paragraph style has a different setting, it won't revert to the language set in the Default paragraph style but the one set in the current paragraph style. To remove any formatting and come back to the Default formatting, you need to select the Clear formatting entry in the Styles drop-down list in the Formatting toolbar.

For the character styles, that's weird indeed, I'd never investigated that link issue because they should inherit the Default paragraph style language in fact. There is a similar report I think: Issue 20692 - Want to link character style to paragraph style. NB: I jut tried and I'm wondering if there is not a bug about the language display. If I change the language of the Default paragraph style after I've set a character style to a part of it, the spellchecker takes into account the new setting, even if the character style still shows the old setting :shock:. So you should definitively trust the Organizer tab of the character style to check if language has been changed or not (compared to default setting).
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norbvor
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:42 am

Re: How to correctly anchor the language in a template

Post by norbvor »

Many thanks, Hagar. That helped me a lot.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: How to correctly anchor the language in a template

Post by Hagar Delest »

Fine, thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed. Or post again if you've still questions.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: How to correctly anchor the language in a template

Post by Hagar Delest »

For information, I investigated your error message about the linked styles. I think that in fact, the Default character style is: no formatting at all (just take the configuration from the Default paragraph style). So you can't link a style with that Default one because it doesn't contain anything. But you can create a new character style and link it to an existing one.

There is still a bug I think with the setting display of the character styles so I've filed a bug report: Issue 91309 - Character styles don't reflect default configuration.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
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