Re: [libreoffice-users] Outline Numbering Ignorance.

Hi Steve,

Steve Edmonds schrieb:
> Hi.
> I'm about to show my ignorance here, what is Tools > Outline Numbering
> for. The help and Writer guide a a bit brief.
>
> For years I have been creating manuals with a layout
> 1
>     1.1
>        1.1.1 etc. where these items are all in the table of contents.
> Last night I change the style of Heading 4 and looked a bit deeper and I
> find I am using Heading styles 1-4

That is the easiest way. That are the styles which are used as default 
in the outline levels.

 with Numbering style 1.

That is a wrong combination.

> When I look at Outline Numbering it sets the paragraph style for each
> outline level but there are no position and spacing or number and
> character style set.

?? Goto Tools > Outline Numbering > Tab Numbering.
In the center of that dialog page I see under Paragraph style the items:

Number, !! *Character style* , Show sublevel, Separator Before and 
After, Start at

And on the next tab, the tab Position I see the items:
Aligned at, Numbering alignment, Numbering followed by, ..at, ..Indent at

What do you miss?

 These are all set in the paragraph and numbering
> styles.

The numbering styles have similar settings because the appearance is 
similar. They use the same technical means. But the effect on the 
paragraph to which they were assigned is different. The outline 
numbering dialog connects a paragraph style to an outline level. The 
resulting element is text:h, the numbering style produces a list with an 
element text:list for the whole list, and text:list-item for each item 
of the list. You can easily look at this technical part, when you save 
the document in flat format (.fodt) and look at the end of the document 
where you find <office:body>.

When you now assign a numbering style to a heading, then you get a 
nesting. You generate a list, which has a list item, which contains a 
heading. Because the list-item is the outer one, the list-numbering 
hides the heading-numbering.

Most cases, where users see curious behavior in numbering is because of 
this mixing. Avoid it!

> How does Tools > Outline Numbering do more than assign a paragraph style
> to an outline level, do the settings in Tools > Outline Numbering over
> ride the styles or vis versa.

There is more to know about outline numbering. You can determine an 
arbitrary paragraph style to be a outline paragraph style without using 
the Tools > Outline Numbering dialog. It is the setting "Outline" in the 
tab Outline&Numbering in the paragraph style dialog. This setting is 
only disabled for those styles, which are assigned via Tools > Outline 
Numbering. You can use this for example for an appendix, which should be 
in the normal level hierarchy, but out of the normal numbering sequence.

To get such additional heading numbered you need to connect this heading 
style with a numbering style, done on the same dialog page. Notice, this 
connecting is different from assigning a numbering style to a paragraph. 
It does not produce a list.

In normal cases you should use the Tools > Outline Numbering way. The 
additional benefit of it is, that when you change the level by promote 
or demote in the Navigator, then the heading changes automatically its 
style. That is possible, because Tools > Outline Numbering contains the 
complete list of which level is assigned to which paragraph style and 
because there exists exactly one such connection.

If you change the level of a heading, which has a self-made heading 
style, then the heading gets the new level as hard formatting of the 
paragraph, but the style remains the same. You would need to manually 
assign a self-made style for the new level to keep level and style 
consistent.

In principle, it is quite simple: Use Tools>Outline Numbering for 
headings and use the list styles like "Numbering 1" for true lists and 
do not mix them. That avoids a lot of trouble.

Kind regards
Regina

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