Hi Bruce,
Bruce Byfield schrieb:
If you've done much work positioning graphics in text, then you know how
difficult it can be to make sure that the graphics stay in place.
My graphics stay where I want them to be. But I know, that sometimes the
layout algorithm needs some help to solve endless loop situations in the
way I want it.
In the past,
many experts have come up with recommendations about the best settings to use,
but these suggestions either don't work if you try to export to another format
or else have been made obsolete by changes to the program over the year.
Yes. Especially the property "Follow text flow" was not available in
older versions.
"Export to another format" is a different problem. Other formats might
have less features to handle pictures. A comparison especially between
odt and doc, and odt and docx might be useful in cases where you are
forced to use doc or docx. I personally don't care about it. AOO and LO
are free of charge and available for several operating systems. Why
should I restrict myself?
In preparation for my upcoming book on OpenOffice/LibreOffice, I'm hoping to
solve
this problem once and for all.
You can write a whole book about using graphics in Writer. You should
not try to solve it "once and for all".
Could anyone who is interested reproduce the
two methods below, then try to break them by copying and pasting, adding text
around the graphics, and anything else you can think of? I would be very
interested in hearing results, especially on platforms other than Linux.
Method #1: Right-click on a graphic, and select Picture -> Options -> Protect
_> Position and Size.
That is only about protecting the graphic from accidentally touching
with the mouse.
Method #2:
1. Turn off auto-caption in Tools > Options
It is off as default. And you should really know what happens in detail,
when you turn it on.
2. Create table with 1 column, 2 rows. Set space above and below. Do not allow
to splilt across page or column, or keep with next paragraph, do not create
heading row.
A table prevents you from moving paragraphs up and down using the
keyboard. A table does not work, when a picture covers two columns in
page layouts or section layouts with two or more columns.
A table with 1 column makes no sense at all. There exists some use-cases
where a table makes sense, for example a catalog or an illustrated
description, where you have a picture in one column and the associated
text in the adjacent column, so there is a table structure of the
content. Other cases mostly need no table.
3. Set space above and below table (multiple of line height)
What do you mean by "multiple of line height"?
4. Place picture in 1st row. If you have trouble placing it in a cell, space
down in the cell a few times before inserting the picture.
Never do spacing using empty paragraphs. That breaks layout easily. The
table row has the property "fit to size" to adapt the height to the picture.
5. Position picture: either move using alignment or, if you want an
indentation from the left, adjust from right, subtracting space from the total
width of the table.
If your picture is so large, that it has no text on its right or left
side, then it is sufficient to put the picture into its own paragraph.
In such cases I anchor it as character, alignment with tab or with the
paragraph alignment features. Add a space after the picture because of
bug https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47355
Anchor to paragraph and wrap "No wrap" works as well.
6. Add caption in second row. If graphic is indented, you will need to create
a caption paragraph style with an indent.
Add caption in an own paragraph and set "keep with next" to the
paragraph of the picture, if caption below picture; or the other way
round, if caption is above picture.
7. In table context menu, unselect Table Boundaries. For convenience, you may
want to unselect only before you print.
Thanks to anyone whose curiosity or need encourages them to join the
experiment.
These are my thoughts about what errors are made in picture handling:
(1) People click on the picture and drag the picture to a new position
or resize it. Problems:
- When you touch the picture with the mouse, then a paragraph anchor
follows the picture movement and might jump to another paragraph. That
is not wanted in most cases.
- The picture position is turned to "From left". That breaks positioning
pictures in mirrored layouts and positioning in margins.
Solution: _Never_ touch a picture with the mouse. Drag the anchor to
move the anchor position, use the picture property dialog to set the
position.
(2) People insert empty paragraphs instead of using the wrap properties
of the picture and/or the margin properties of the paragraph of the text.
(3) People do not know, that "Insert caption" adds a frame and puts the
width of the picture to be relative to the frame width.
(4) People do not know about the property "Follow text flow".
(5) People stress the layout algorithm by combining two pictures in one
paragraph in addition to text flow right or left of the picture. Or they
want settings, which would result in endless loop of the layout
algorithm. (Happened to me too, see
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=64428)
(6) People do not know, that wrapping only affects text, not other pictures.
(7) People do not know the differences between the anchor types.
Kind regards
Regina
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