Open office formatting

[fourtwentyfour]

I have successfully created a template that has margins and two columns to suit the page I need to print on. It was a standard page with a coloured border with a couple of 'pictures' going into the text area. I worked around the picture by using a tab on a couple of lines, or a carriage return, manually.

Sadly the paper has changed, and there are now flower pictures, about 10 of them, that intrude into the area that I wish to print on, around the borders. It will be very hard to manually work around this.

How can I use some sort of variable border that is tied to line position, such that text can be inserted and flow around the obstacles?

Thanks.

[tjh290633]

I suspect that you might get round this by locating your pictures at the page edge and applying wrap to the pictures.

TJH

[fourtwentyfour]

Thanks for the reply. I can see that I worded my question badly....

The paper sheet that I want to print on is partly printed with a border in colour, but with drawings of flowers around the edges that encroach upon the place where I can write or type text. This is what I want to do, to print on the page, but only in 'unused' places.

Sadly the spaces allowed for text are two separate columns but they have irregular edges. This would be great for handwriting, which the paper is intended for, but for over printing it is harder.

I use a writer document in libre office where the margins are much greater than usual, with two columns, to restrain the text so it fits into the space on the paper. This would be ok if the spaces were regular, but the flowers at the sides have to be avoided.

I want a space to type in that has fixed boundaries, some being different to the rest, but located at a place which is not related to the text.

Another way* to think of it is to imagine an A4 sheet with margins such that the writing area is 9cm wide by 15cm long. Now think of lines 3, 4, and 16 that need a 1cm tab to avoid a flower, and line 20 has to end 1cm from the right. When I paste in the text these tabs are applied with the text, but ideally I want them to be part of the margins for the document.

*Consider one column instead of 2.

I suspect the solution is going to be hard. I might just have to use spaces and returns to avoid the obstacles, and do this individually for each letter. Thanks.

[staffordian]

Does Open Office support text boxes?

Just wondering if a series of text boxes corresponding to the area you wish to print on can be constructed. And then set an order for the text to flow from one box to the next?

It used to be common for publishing programs to work in this way and most word processing programs these days incorporate functions which were once exclusively available in publishing software, so it might be worth seeing if this is possible.

[madhatter]

Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice support text boxes but last time I looked, they were rectangular, so unless that has changed in a later version, you would need to place several different sized text boxes and split the text to suit. Not very neat, but possibly preferable to adding extra tabs and spaces.

[fourtwentyfour]

Yes, text boxes would be good, but only if the text flowed from one box to the next. I thought that each box had to be treated separately, but if there were a command to over-ride that it might be a solution. Thanks.

I have just tried text boxes and frames. They both expand to allow in text, and text remains in the selected box.

Perhaps I need a publishing programme?

[torata]

Just an idea, but could you keep your two columns as is, but put blank/see-through images on the document that correspond to where the flowers would be, and then use the text flow option so that the text flows around the blank images?

torata

[madhatter]

...put blank/see-through images on the document that correspond to where the flowers would be...

I was wondering about the same thing, though it could be rather a faff to implement.

Perhaps an image of the “blank” sheet complete with flowers could be opened as a GIMP or Photoshop file, and the areas covering the flowers selected, filled with the bucket tool then be set to transparent, and saved as a png (not a jpeg, anyway)?

[Lanark]

You can do this by just setting the paragraph indent for each paragraph on the page.

Make sure the ruler is visible, click anywhere in the paragraph and move the ^ on the ruler to indent that paragraph. You can do the same for the end of the line.
You may need to add some extra returns instead of just allowing the text to wrap onto the next line.

To change several paragraphs at once, select them all and choose Format > Paragraph > indent

This will be much easier to do if you type all the text first and then apply the indents.

[fourtwentyfour]

Thanks again.

Paragraph indents might be worth trying, but I had hoped to make 'text area' that was fixed and could be used repeatedly.

I tried a desktop publishing programme following a suggestion here, Scribus, and although I know nothing about it I found an example of a column of text with a picture inserted at the left centre of a column, as mentioned above. The text flowed around it, just as I want. So, if I can insert a blank transparent 'picture' to cover the flowers that might be an answer.

I don't really have enough time to figure out the dtp package in full, but if I am lucky I might find a quick way to do it. You might have a way to do this, or suggest an easier programme, if this one is not suitable?

Can you imagine me trying to format the text on the computer and then having to print to compare the result with the actual page? It takes a long time, uses paper and ink which makes it harder when many letters have to be written.

As I write an idea springs to mind, which I tried. I took the libre office page, containing text, opened a frame and planted it on the left of the text, adjusted it to fit two lines and about 1cm wide, and it simply moved the text out of the way, just as required. So the trick will be to find a standard size, save it and find a way to paste it at the start of a line anchored to the column edge.

Thanks

[Lanark]

If this is a work thing, I wonder if the intention of the new design is for the printing to just go on top of the pictures?

Even if you get this to work, having your text all raggedy is going to look very unprofessional when inevitably someone prints it on normal paper.

[fourtwentyfour]

It's not a work thing, and the expectation is that the paper is handwritten. The letters go to children in a disadvantaged environment to help inspire and motivate them. More can be achieved faster, by printing, without spending many hours per letter by hand.

[servodude]

I have just tried using "basic shapes" from the "insert shape" menu as keep outs and it appears to work nicely

Method:
- position and resize the shape
- anchor to page
- set the "wrap"
- set the transparency to 100%

It can be tricky to select the shape afterwards for re-positioning; so I'd suggest leaving the making invisible the last thing done
It looks as though you can build up some quite interesting layouts very easily

- sd