Introduction to Styles PDF

1 CHAPTER Introduction to Styles In Class IX, you had learned to create, format and edit documents in LibreOffice Writer. In today’s world, a document created and presented in professional style is appreciated by all. There are two ways of creating an attractive digital document...

1 CHAPTER Introduction to Styles In Class IX, you had learned to create, format and edit documents in LibreOffice Writer. In today’s world, a document created and presented in professional style is appreciated by all. There are two ways of creating an attractive digital document in Writer: manually formatting a document or by applying styles. You learned manual formatting in class IX, where you selected a part of a document, such as page, paragraph or words and then applied formatting effects using the formatting toolbar. To format different portion(s) in the document, having same style, steps were repeated for all part(s) of the document. So, to change any aspect(s) of formatting, the entire process was repeated for the document. Manual formatting is popular, as it is easy to use and requires less knowledge. Creating a big report with consistent format becomes difficult when manual formatting is used. To avoid inconsistency in formatting and reduce time and effort in formatting a document, we use Styles in Writer. In this chapter, you will learn how to style a document by using– style formats, creating new styles, updating styles, applying styles and using template to format the current document. Introduction to Styles A style is a collection of all formatting information, which you want to save and then apply on the document. For example, following details of Font can be stored as a style with the name ‘Title style’. Size – 12 Name – Bookman Old Style Weight –Bold Alignment – Left 2023-24  notes Now you can use and consistently apply Title style to all titles of the document. To change the style of Title in a document, you just need to update the Title style and apply it to the document. Similarly, to change the format of the complete document, just change the style applied to it. Using Style allows you to shift your focus from appearance of the document to the content of document. This chapter will help you learn how to create and apply styles in Libreoffice Writer. Style Categories Writer provides six Style categories, which are as follows: (a) Page – all documents in Writer are based on pages, hence for formatting them, Page Style is used. It defines basic page layout like page size, its margin, placement of header and footer, footnote, borders and background. A document can have one or many page styles. If a page style is not specified, Writer uses its built-in Default page style. (b) Paragraph – after deciding on a page format, next is the document content, which is organised in paragraphs. A paragraph begins and ends by pressing Enter key. Paragraph formatting includes tab stops, text alignment, line spacing and borders. Usually, it also includes Character styling attributes. (c) Character – this styling is used to work on block of letters, i.e. word(s) in the paragraph instead of the whole paragraph. By using character styles, you can change the appearance of a part of a paragraph without affecting the other part. Character styles allow changing the text colour, text size, highlighting text and emphasising it. (d) Frame – using frames, a document can be organised in sections, so that each section of the page can have a different appearance. Frames are like containers, which can hold text, graphics and lists. Therefore, applying Frame Styles allows to format a frame by specifying its size, position, border and how the text is placed around the picture. 4 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  (e) List – to style lists in a document, the Writer provides a separate category. It can be used to style lists by putting numbering or bullets of a different kind or specify numeric format. (f) Table – using tables, a large amount of information can be organised and presented effectively. Table Style category allows to format a table by adding borders, using different text or border colour(s), aligning text inside the table, having different patterns or text colour. Now we know which Style category should be applied to style/format a section of the document, let’s learn how to apply it. Styles and Formatting Writer provides many options and tools to style or format a document. All formatting options, learned in Class IX, which can be applied using Formatting toolbar, can also be Fig. 1.1: Style drop down list in Toolbar applied using Style menu. There are many predefined Styles in Writer, which can be accessed by using the following methods: (i) Using Style option from Menu Bar (ii) Using Style Drop Down list box, as shown in Fig. 1.1, from the Toolbar. The current paragraph style is displayed in the textbox. If the Toolbar is not visible then, click on View>Toolbars, and enable Formatting/“Formatting (Styles)”. (iii) Using Sidebar Menu. On the Sidebar, clicking on Styles icon, displays the Fig. 1.2: Style sub menu from sidebar Style sub-menu as shown in Fig. 1.2. (iv) Using keyboard shortcut — F11 function key. If you choose to style your document using this option, you will find various available options on top as shown in Fig. 1.3 In Fig. 1.3, first six icons allow to select Fig. 1.3: Buttons at the top of sidebar the category of style, such as Paragraph style, sub menu Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 5 2023-24  Character style, Frame style, Page style, List style and Table style to work on. Click on any one of these buttons to display a list of existing styles in that category. From the bottom of the window selecting Show Preview option displays its style along with the name in the list. Fig. 1.4 shows the list when preview is not selected and Fig. 1.5 shows when the Fig. 1.4: Paragraph Styles Fig. 1.5: Paragraph Styles with preview is selected. without Show previews Show previews At the bottom of this menu, there is a Drop Down list, to select the filter for the style list to be displayed above. By default this filter is set to Hierarchical as shown at the bottom of Fig. 1.5. Assignment 1 Select each of the Styles – Character style, Frame style, Page style, List style and Table style and list the styles under each category. Let us use these styles in a document. For applying any styles, such as Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page, List, Table follow the given steps. Step 1. Select the text to be formatted. The selected text may be a collection of characters, words, lines, paragraph, page, frame or table. Step 2. To format the selected text, choose appropriate style by clicking the button from the top of the Styles bar. Step 3. A list of styles for that category appears. Double click on the desired style to apply to the selected text. 6 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  notes Practical Activity 1.1 Apply an existing Heading style, from Paragraph Styles. Step 1. Create a new document named ‘noise.odt’ with the text as shown in Fig. 1.6. Step 2. Add a title, ‘Noise Pollution’ on top. Fig. 1.6: noise.odt Step 3. Select the Tile – Noise Pollution Step 4. Open Styles Menu using Sidebar and go to Headings option. Step 5. Double click on Heading 4 to apply. Observe that the Fig. 1.7 shows the Heading 4 style is applied to the heading ‘Noise Pollution’. Fig. 1.7: Applying Heading 4 options of Paragraph Styles Using predefined Heading Style, allow you to use them as a Book Mark for browsing the document. Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 7 2023-24  notes Practical Activity 1.2 Apply an existing page style on ‘noise.odt’ Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Activity 1.2. Step 2. Insert a blank page in the beginning by selecting Insert>Page Break from main menu bar, as shown in Fig. 1.8. Fig. 1.8: Inserting page break Step 3. Observe that in Fig. 1.9, inserting a page break will shift the matter to the second page. Now, place the cursor at the beginning of page 2, where the matter appears as shown in Fig. 1.9. Step 4. Open Style Menu from side bar and select the Page Styles option as shown in Fig. 1.9. Fig. 1.9: Selecting Landscape from Page Styles option of sidebar menu Step 5. Double click on Landscape to change page orientation to Landscape. After applying Page Styles, you can observe that the document pages orientation is changed to Landscape from Portrait. Note: Applying page style on a page may affect the entire document. 8 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  Assignment 2 notes (i) Try applying Landscape option on one page of a large file. (ii) Explore, in which situation Conditional Styles filter, given in Paragraph category of styling, can be used? Fill Format To apply a style on words present at different locations in the document, you will have to go to each word separately and apply it on each word. Writer provides a convenient way of doing it through Fill Format option. It is the second icon from right on the Style menu, as shown in Fig 1.3. This method is useful when a same style is to be applied at many places scattered in the document. Fill Format can be used to style scattered – pages, frames, tables, lists, paragraphs or characters. Follow the steps given below to use it. Step 1. Open the document to be styled. Step 2. Open the Styles window and select the desired style category and then desired style from drop down list. Step 3. Select Fill Format button. Step 4. To apply the selected style, take the mouse pointer to desired location and click. Do take care to apply style on appropriate type of content. Step 5. Repeat step 4 until all the changes have been made for that style in the entire document. Step 6. To quit Fill Format option, click the Fill Format button again or press the Esc key. Practical Activity 1.3 Use Fill Format to change appearance of paragraphs at different places in the document using paragraph formatting. A file ‘documentation.odt’ with at least 5 pages of text is used for the activity. Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 9 2023-24  Step 1. Open a file ‘documentation.odt’ having 5 pages of text. Observe the indented sentences in second page in Fig. 1.10. Fig. 1.10: Pages of file documentation Step 2. Go to Style Menu from sidebar and click on Paragraph category, and select List Paragraph from the drop down list as shown in Fig. 1.11. Fig. 1.11: Selecting List paragraph option in Paragraph Styles category 10 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  Step 3. Click at the beginning of the sentence to be styled using List Paragraph. Step 4. Now click on Fill button, keep on doing same to apply the style for all sentences using desired format. Observe in Fig. 1.12 that how the indented list items look after applying the Fill Format button. Step 5. Press ‘Esc’ key to disable Fill button. Fig. 1.12: Using Fill Format button Creating and Updating a New Style Till now you have used only predefined styles to format a document. If existing styles specified by Writer do not match your requirement, then it is also possible to create a Custom Style. There are many ways to create a custom style, two of them – From Selection and by using drag and drop are explained here. (a) From Selection – last button in Style menu, is Styles action button is used to create a new style or modify an existing style. It can also be used to load a style defined in document or template, in the list. Let us learn how to create a new style; which is the first function in the drop down list of action button. Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 11 2023-24  Step 1. Select the portion of document, such as page, paragraph, character, to change its appearance. Format it as per the requirement. Step 2. From the buttons at the top of the Style menu, choose the category (paragraph, character, page, etc.) for which a new style is to be created. Fig. 1.13: Selecting New Style Step 3. Select Style action button. A list of options as from Selection to create a New shown in Fig. 1.13 is displayed. Click on New Style Style from Selection. Step 4. In Create Style dialog window, type the name of new style, say, ‘MyStyle’ as shown in Fig. 1.14. The names of existing styles are displayed in the window. Step 5. Click OK to save the name of new style. Observe that the name of the newly created style ‘MyStyle’ appears in the Fig. 1.14: Creating a new style MyStyle list of styles. Practical Activity 1.4 To create a custom paragraph style ‘myStyle’, using file ‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2. Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2. Step 2. Format the content of the paragraph with Font face – Arial, Font size 12, line spacing 1.5. Step 3. Select paragraph button from Style Menu of sidebar as shown in Fig. 1.15. Fig. 1.15: Selecting Paragraph Style 12 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  Step 4. Select Style Action button. Step 5. Click on New Style From Selection. A Create Style dialog box will appear as shown in Fig. 1.16. Fig. 1.16: Create New style using Selection Step 6. Type ‘myStyle’ as style name in the box and click OK. The Style Name (myStyle) will appear in the drop down list under Paragraph category. Fig. 1.17: New created myStyle becomes part of Style list under Paragraph category Updating a Style Instead of creating a new style for a small changes in predefined style, an existing Style can be modified on desired aspect. Updating Current Style (Fig. 1.18), the Fig. 1.18: Selecting Update second option in list can be used for doing so. Selected Style option Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 13 2023-24  notes Follow the given below steps to modify an existing user defined style of page, frame or paragraph style. Step 1. Select the page/paragraph to be modified. Step 2. Format the selected portion as per the requirement. Step 3. Go to Style menu, and click on the button to update. Step 4. Using Style Action button, click on Updated Selected Style. Note – Ensure that the aspect modified remains same throughout the selection. For example, in paragraph, if you are changing font face or size then, throughout the paragraph it should remain same. Using Drag and Drop Another way of creating a new style is using Drag and Drop method. It is very easy, as the desired formatted portion of text is just dragged and dropped at correct place in the Style menu. Use the following steps to create a new Style using Drag and Drop method. Step 1. Select the text from the document and change its formatting as desired. Step 2. From the buttons at the top of the Style menu, choose the desired category of style to create. Step 3. Click on the desired style under which, new style is to be created. Step 4. From the document drag the selected portion of text to the Style Menu. Note – While dragging the text, check the cursor shape, as it changes to indicate whether the desired operation is possible or not. Step 5. Create Style dialog window appears (see Fig. 1.16), type the name of new style. Names of existing styles are displayed in the window. Step 6. Click OK button to save the name of new style. The Create Style window displays the list of custom styles. To update an existing style, choose the style name from the list. So same method can be used to create or update a Style. Drag and Drop cannot be used to create a Page Style. 14 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24  notes Practical Actiivty 1.5 Create a new style ‘myStyle1’ using drag and drop, by changing line spacing to 1 and font size to 13 in myStyle. Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2. Step 2. Format the content of the paragraph with Font size 13 and line spacing 1. Step 3. Select paragraph button from Style menu of sidebar as shown in Fig. 1.19. Fig. 1.19: Paragraph Styles in Style menu of sidebar Step 4. Now drag the selected text to Style menu, as shown in Fig. 1.20. Fig. 1.20: Creating a new style using drag and drop Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 15 2023-24  Step 5. Press OK. The style name (myStyle1) will appear in the drop down list under Paragraph category as shown in Fig. 1.21. Fig. 1.21: New style myStyle1 created using drag and drop appears in the style list Apart from creating a new style or modifying an existing style, a new document can be styled/formatted using pre-defined templates or another document which suits our requirement. This helps in copying all styles of the template/document in one go to our Style menu and makes formatting our task easy. Load Styles (from a template or document) The last option, in Style Action button of Style Menu is Load Styles. It is used to copy styles from an existing template or document. Once copied, in the list of styles, you can create a new document having same appearance as old one with no extra efforts. Follow the given steps to copy style from template or document Step 1. In the Styles Menu, click on the Load Styles as shown in Fig. 1.22. Step 2. It will open the Load Styles dialog box as shown in Fig. 1.23. In the Load Styles dialog box, choose the category of your document. Fig. 1.22: Selecting Load Step 3. Find and select the desired template to copy Styles option from Style Action button styles from. Note that there are no templates stored in My Templates category. 16 Domestic Data entry operator – class X 2023-24 Step 4. From the same dialog window, also, select the options for the types of styles to be copied, such as Text for Paragraph and Character styles, Frame, Pages or Numbering (List styles). By selecting Overwrite option, the styles being copied will replace any existing styles with the same name. Step 5. Click OK to copy the styles. Step 6. In case styles are to be copied Fig. 1.23: Selecting the My Templates from Categories of Load Styles dialog window from a file, then instead of Template option, click on the From File button. A File Selection dialog box is displayed. Select the desired document from your computer. Applying styles Whenever a new document is created, the Writer applies default style(s) to it, and the same is displayed in the status bar as shown in Fig. 1.24. You may like to retain the default style or change it. Self Exploration Learn other ways of accessing Style options as listed in section 1.4. summary Fig. 1.24: The current Default Style is displayed on the A Style is collection of all status bar formatting information, which you want to save and then apply on the document. Writer provides six Style categories – Page, Paragraph, Character, Frame, List and Table. Predefined Heading style(s) act as bookmarks in a document. These bookmarks allow faster browsing in a document. These Style(s) tools can be accessed from Menu bar, Drop Down List and Side bar. Fill Format is used to style scattered – Pages, Frames, Tables, Lists, Paragraphs or Characters in a document. Digital Documentation (aDvanceD) using libreoffice Writer 17 2023-24