[libreoffice-users] Re: Image problems

Oh, boy, sad story!

LO (and OO before that, too) have troubles if you go over a certain image  
density (i.e. the ratio of images to text becomes too low). That will make  
positioning very difficult. I have alo noticed that sometimes the  
positioning of images does not seem to work as advertised, but that is  
always hard to be sure about since many of the image-placing criterions  
are not obvious.

That said: I have had to clean up large documents with many images before,  
and this is how it worked best:
Go to "View -> web layout", that shoud show you the document on one  
endless page, as wide as the LO window is. This is as close to the  
"source" of the document as you will get. You can then anchor all images  
where you want them to appear in the text. If the document was converted  
from MS Word maybe you should also make sure that each is inside a frame.  
I always set the frames to scale automatically in vertical direction, and  
the image inside it to 100% horizontal size (while keeping aspect ratio),  
then make oush the lower edge of the frame up, forcing it to become as  
small as its content allows it. I usually use the frame template and set  
it to "top of the paragraph, right edge of the printable area", anchor to  
paragraph, as well as the sizing stuff. After that selecting a frame and  
doubleclicking the template will do the trick. Except if you habe multiple  
images in one paragraph of course, then you'll need to micro-manage,  
because they'll tend to overlap, even if they're not allowed to.
After that is done, every image should have a proper anchor and know where  
it's supposed to go. That's when it's time to save (better save to a new  
filename, or save a new version) and switch to "print layout". This is  
when LO will determine line and page breaks and so on. This will also  
cause some images to move because they were in the middle of a page break  
or so. There should now be much fewer images out of place than in the  
beginning, and those have to be moved by hand.
I have never had one of the scrolling-runaway you describe, but still  
scrolling with an image "in hand" can be painful and you'll miss the right  
place too often. I usually set LO to display at least two pages side by  
side, or even more (glad to have a large screen!), then scroll to a point  
where I can see both the page where an image is and the page it's supposed  
to go to. I pull it over, and if the zoom should not allow me to position  
it right then, I just leave it in the vicinity, zoom in and finish the job.

Thad said, as mentioned above, there seems to be a critical image density  
above which things go downhill. Last time I was useing MS word for a  
similar project, it had the same problem only worse, but that's a long  
time ago, so I can't tell how it is these days. In LO sometimes scaling  
images down a bit helps, or spacing them further apart (i.e. avoid having  
to images in one paragraph).

That said: Both MS Word and LO are not the same as a good graphical layout  
program. If visually pleasing and clean graphical design and good layout  
are priorities, there is probably other software out there that is better  
suited. I've heard good things about Scribus, but haven't really tested  
it. It is probably not suited well for large texts, though.

Good luck,
   Zak


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