Re: [libreoffice-users] Text boxing / layering?

At 09:05 22/06/2014 -0700, Johan Rainhill wrote:
> I'm writing CV. The top contains address at the left and title/date 
> at center, or so. Traditionally this is typed by separating the 
> entities with spaces and tabs; if I add to
> address, I must re-edit the title/date as well.

In that case you have yet to discover how to do this properly! You 
shouldn't use spaces to achieve something like this: that's 
typewriter thinking. And I wonder what you mean by the plural "tabs": 
I hope you mean that you need one per line, but I fear you might be 
typing repeated tabs to move across the page. Writer, along with most 
word processors, provides default tab stops across the page at 
regular intervals, but relying on these is a recipe for the sort of 
problem you describe.

Instead, after each line of your address, enter *one* tab character 
and then the text of the corresponding line of the centred material. 
To place the centred material appropriately, set a suitable tab stop 
either in the paragraphs or in their paragraph style. You can do this 
by clicking the ruler at the top of the page display. This could be a 
(default) Left tab if you want the centre material to be left-aligned 
to some position or a Centre tab if you want each line truly centred. 
This technique may well be easier than any of the more complicated 
ways that you may imagine.

But there are indeed other techniques.

> I tried tables already. I created 1x1 tables, but I could not move 
> them in anyway.

By default, tables span the full width of the document between the 
margins - and you clearly cannot move them in that configuration. But 
if you go to Table | Table Properties... | Table (or right-click | 
Table... | Table) and select something other than Automatic for 
Alignment, you can indeed reduce Width and move the table around. 
But, since you want material paralleled in columns, a one-cell table 
is little use to you.

> I could create 2x1 table but then I don't get the title to center.

No, you *can* do this. One way would be to create a two-column, 
one-row table, setting its alignment to Left and selecting Width and 
then column widths to place the right column centrally on the page. 
But a simpler way to do this is probably to create a three-column 
(one-row) table with three equal columns and simply to use the first 
two cells, leaving the right column empty. Tables do not need to have 
printable borders, of course. Within each cell, you have separate 
control over alignment of the text, so you can choose Left, Centred, 
or whatever.

> Is there a way to do this in modern way by having boxes (like in 
> TeX) or layers (like in GIMP)?

There are indeed other techniques, but I'm not sure that they are 
"modern" or more useful in your situation. As someone has already 
suggested, you can create a frame (Insert | Frame...). This gives you 
the facility to drag the frame and its contents around the page, but 
your need seems to be the opposite: to have some material at the top 
and properly centred.

Another possibility is a text box. Go to View | Toolbars > | Drawing 
to display the Drawing toolbar (at the foot of the window). Click the 
"T" (Text) icon and drag a rectangular text box in your page. You can 
drag this around in much the same way as a frame.

> If this turns out to be a feature request...

I strongly suspect you don't need any more than you have.

> I'm putting this to bigger context: famous mathematician wrote a 
> text book in two weeks (check!) by technique what I call now a 
> scrapbook technique; he had text pieces in cards which he then 
> arranged to form the final book, more or less.

In a word processor, you do not need to have boxes to contain blocks 
of text that you may need to move around: you can simply select any 
contiguous text and cut and paste in elsewhere in the document. 
That's a *more* flexible facility, not less.

> So, I want write text to small boxes which I can later grab and drag 
> to correct positions.

If you do this, you will limit yourself into thinking in typewriter 
and paper-scrap techniques and never make the best use of a word 
processor. My later suggestions - what you actually asked for - are 
almost certainly worse techniques that the simple three-cell table solution.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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