Formatting a document: direct formatting, styles and templates

Introduction

On Apache OpenOffice it is possible to work on two different ways: applying format directly through the use of menus or toolbars or through the use of styles.

Direct formatting seems easier, but can be problematic on complex documents while styles seems complex but are a really powerful tool easy to use once you get used to them: let's see why

Direct format vs. styles

Maybe the simplest way to understand how styles work is a text document, but the concept is valid for all Apache OpenOffice components.

Suppose it is needed to write a long document with many chapters, each one with several sub-levels, that the chapter heading needs to be written on a particular sans serif font (like Liberation Sans, Arimo, Arial...) on bold and at large size, while the body text must be on a particular, and smaller, serif font (tinos, times, etcetera).

While it is possible to do that with direct formatting, the possible problems of working on this way are quite clear: consistency (use 14 point instead of 16 for a heading, forgot to use bold...), but mainly maintenance. If afterwards you decide to change the typeface, or its size, or the page margins... you'll need to do a lot of work.

But suppose that instead of setting "Liberation Sans, 16 point, bold, centred, five millimetres before the paragraph, three after"... you just say "Heading 1", that instead of "Liberation Serif, 11 points, justified..." you just said "Body text" and that on a different place you define how a Heading 1 or the Body text looks alike. By separating the attributes applied to the text from the definition of those attributes the administration of documents became far more easy: for example, changing to change the font used on the document you only need to modify the definition, not the document content because that change on the definition will propagate without effort.

But styles provide with a lot more that just consistency and easy administration: they permit to create an automatic table of content, to number chapters, that a particular set of graphical elements that use one style display the same line style, or colour, or text associated, it is possible to set the format of a particular cell on Calc dependant of its content... a lot more than by the use of direct formatting.

In addition to this, styles can be "stored" on particular documents called "Templates" to reuse the styles definitions: defining styles is something that need to be done only seldom, but that it is used a lot.

Administration and edition of styles

TODO

Templates

TODO