Digital Documentation

 1. CREATE AND APPLY STYLES IN THE DOCUMENT

A style is a set of formats that you can apply to selected pages, text, frames and other elements in your document to quickly change their appearance When you apply a style you apply a whole group of formats at the same time.

Styles are logical attributes. Using styles means that you stop saying "font size 14pt.Times New Roman, bold, centered", and you start saying "Title" because you have defined the "Title" style to have those characteristics. In other words, styles mean that you shift the emphasis from what the text (or page or other element) looks like to what the text is. 

Styles help improve consistency in a document. They also make major formatting changes easy For example, you may decide to change the indentation of all paragraphs, or change the font of all titles. For a long document, this simple task can be prohibitive Styles make the task easy. 

OpenOffice.org supports the following types of styles:

1) Page styles include margins, headers and footers borders and backgrounds In Calc, page styles also include the sequence for printing sheets. 

2) Paragraph styles control all aspects of a paragraph's appearance, such as text alignment, tab stops. line spacing, and borders, and can include character formatting.

3) Character styles affect selected text within a paragraph, such as the font and size of text, or bold and italic formats.

4) Frame styles are used to format graphic and text frames, including wrapping type borders, backgrounds, and columns.

5) Numbering styles apply similar alignment, numbering or bullet characters, and fonts to numbered or bulleted lists.

6) Cell styles include fonts, alignment, borders, background, number formats (for

example, currency, date, number), and cell protection. 

7) Graphics styles in drawings and presentations include line, area shadowing transparency, font, connectors, dimensioning, and other attributes. 

8) Presentation styles include attributes for font, indents, spacing, alignment,and

tabs. 

• Applying styles

OpenOffice.org provides several ways for you to select styles to apply

> Using the Styles and Formatting window

1) Click the Styles and Formatting icon bar, or click Format > Styles and Formatting or press F11 The Styles and located at the left-hand end of the object Formatting window shows the types of styles available for the 000 (OpenOffice.org) component you are using Figure 1 shows the window for Writer, with Page Styles visible. 

You can move this window to a convenient position on the screen or dock it to an edge (hold down the Ctrl key and drag it by the title bar to where you want it docked). 

2) Click on one of the icons at the top left of the Styles and Formatting window to display a list of styles in a particular category. 

3) To apply an existing style (except for character styles). position the insertion point in the paragraph, frame, or page, and then double-click on the name of the style in one of these lists. To apply a character style, select the characters first.

• Using Fill Format mode

Fill format mode is used to apply a style to many different areas quickly without having to go back to the Styles and Formatting window and double-click every time. This method is quite useful when you need to format many scattered paragraphs cells, or other items with the same style

1) Open the Styles and Formatting window and select the style you want to apply

2) Click the Fill Format mode con 3) To apply a paragraph, page or frame style, hover the mouse over the paragraph, page, or frame and click. 

3) To apply a character style, hold down the

mouse button while selecting the characters, clicking on a word applies the character style for that word. Repeat step 3 until you made all the changes for that style. 

4) To quit Fill Format mode, click the Fill Format mode icon again or press the

Esc key

 

{Caution: when this mode is active a right click anywhere in the document undoes the last fill format action. Be careful not to accidentally right click and thus undo actions you want to keep. }