OpenOffice.org Off the Wall: Shooting the Sun

In school, you probably were taught that a paragraph is the development of
a complete thought. That is a contents-based definition. In OpenOffice.org
or any other word processor, a paragraph also has a format definition:
the contents of the document from the mouse cursor's position when you
begin to type to the place where you either press the Enter key or end
the document. Even if you type only a title, when you press the Enter key,
you have ended one paragraph and started another.

This definition may seem obvious to experienced computer users. It is
worth mentioning, however, because it stresses the importance of paragraphs
in document design. Because paragraphs are so common in word processor
documents, and because they are so well-defined, paragraphs probably are
the most important elements in document design. In other word processors,
they even can compensate partly for the inability to design pages.

Paragraphs in Writer don't have to work so hard, because page styles
do part of the work of formatting. Yet, if anything, Writer has even
more settings for paragraph styles than do most other word processors. In fact,
some posters to the OpenOffice.org user's list actually have complained
about the number of choices available. Fortunately, most of these choices
have reasonable defaults and can be ignored until needed.

Options for paragraph styles in Writer can be divided into three main
categories: fonts, positioning and advanced tricks. Font selection
already has been discussed in this column (see
Fonts of
Wisdom). Advanced
tricks will be the subject of the next column. In this column, I
discuss positioning: how the paragraph sites on a line, how lines in a
paragraph are spaced and how the paragraph is positioned when a page
break occurs.
Understanding Body and Heading Styles
How you position a paragraph usually depends on whether it is a body or a
heading style. These two categories usually are designed in contrast to
each other. For this reason, they usually have different formatting needs.

Body styles are the ones used for most of the text. Although you can use
the Default style as the main body style, the Text Body style is a better
choice, because you never know when having an unmodified default will be
handy. You also may want to adjust the style hierarchy using the Linked
with field on the Organizer tab for each style, so that table contents
and list styles are subordinate to Text Body.

The main concern with body styles is readability. Although
readability depends partly on font choice, it is determined even more
by positioning. Careful positioning often can improve a poorly selected
font or destroy the readability of a suitable font.

By contrast, heading styles are used for the titles of topics throughout
the document. Often, they are in a different font from the body styles,
as well as being larger or colored differently. Writer has ten levels of
headings pre-defined, although in practice more than two or three is
overkill. Because word processors have means of formatting other than
indentation, each heading does not need to be indented further than the
previous heading level. Numbered headings still are useful at times,
though, especially in technical documents.

Heading styles are used by many other tools in Writer, including the
Navigator, cross-references, tables of contents, outline numbering and
document fields. But these are topics for other days. For now, what
is worth noting is if you are using fields to set up headers or
footers, you may find it easier to using Heading 1 instead of Title and
Heading 2 instead of Sub-title.

The purpose of headings is to allow readers to find different sections
of the document quickly. This goal explains why headings often are
formatted more heavily than are body styles. Positioning options can help achieve
this goal by assuring that headings are closer to the section to which
they apply and planning page breaks around them.

Writer also includes many styles that are used automatically. These
include the Content styles for tables of contents, the Index styles for
indexes and the header and footer styles. However, while these styles
can be designed separately, they generally are based on either the body
or heading designs.
Positioning on a Line
Headings are usually relatively short. For this reason, line positioning
mostly is the concern of body styles. The first consideration for line
positioning is the font. What matters is not the aesthetics of the font,
but how many characters fit on a line, given the choice of font and font
size. Regardless of the choices, the average line should be no more than
three alphabets long or about 72 characters long. The smaller and more
compact the font, the fewer characters per line the paragraph should have.

Additionally, If you notice that your choices regularly result in several
lines in a row that end in hyphens, you either should change the font
size or adjust Text Flow -> Hyphenation. The hyphenation options include
not only the number of characters at the end of a line or a start, but
also the number of consecutive hyphens used. These options are useful
especially for body styles designed for multiple column layouts.

Once the number of characters per line is settled, the next area of
concern is alignment. Alignment is the way that a paragraph's lines
fit between the margins of the page, column or frames. Ever since the
invention of the personal computer, the feature has been the subject
of fads.

When word processors started to be used, many formatting options
impossible to achieve on the typewriter suddenly became widely available. The
most popular of the new choices was justified text: paragraphs whose
left and right margins were even. On the typewriter, only left-justified
alignment was possible, that is, paragraphs with an even left margin and
an uneven right margin. For almost a century, justified text was the most
obvious difference between a professionally printed and a typewritten
page. But with the word processor, suddenly everybody's printing could
look professional. For this reason, justified text became the norm in
the 1980s.

Gradually, a reaction set in The justified text in professional printing
usually is the result of line-by-line tweaking. By contrast, the automatic
justification of word processors often left distracting rivers of white
space where too much space had been left between words or letters in
body styles. As a result, in recent years, designers usually consider
left alignment to be more suitable.

Admittedly, using justified alignment in Writer is less of a problem than
it is in most word processors. Setting the Last Line option on the Alignment
tab to Left eliminates a line fragment with huge gaps between letters.
Running Tools -> Hyphenation when the document is finished eliminates
many of the unsightly gaps left by the a justified alignment. Even so,
left justification gives acceptable results with less effort. Often,
left justification produces acceptable results without running the
Hyphenation tool at all. If you are not willing to take the extra time
to tweak, then you should avoid justified alignment altogether.

With alignment set, the next concern is the Indent options on the Indents
and Spacing tab. These options set the left and right indentation for
the lines. Somewhat confusingly, though, they are listed as Before
text and After text. You also can set an additional indentation for the
first line of a paragraph, eliminating the need to press the Tab key
for each new paragraph.

In fact, for many documents, setting the first line indentation
eliminates the need to set the Tabs tab at all. The most common use of
tabs in Writer is setting up headers and footers, so that one piece of
information is aligned with the left margin, one with the center of the
line and one with the right margin. If you are doing a table of figures,
you also might want to use the decimal tab to align numbers on each side
of a decimal point. However, Tools -> Options -> Text Document
> Table includes options for automatically recognizing numbers in tables and
right-aligning them in table cells, so you may not need even decimal tabs.
Spacing Between Lines
Spacing between lines is set using the Above paragraph and Below paragraph
options on the Indents and Spacing tab. These options are important for
different reasons in body and heading styles. In body styles, line spacing
improves readability. The smaller the font size or the more compressed
the font, the more line spacing is needed. Extra line spacing also can be
used to mark the start of a new paragraph, although this choice should
be avoided if new paragraphs already are marked by extra indentation of
the first line. By contrast, in heading styles, the spacing between lines
creates a visual clue as to which body of text a heading is related. This
is a basic cue for readers, but one that amateurs often ignore.

Line spacing can be set in a number of ways. You can use single, double
or 1.5 lines if you want line spacing to be set for you. Other options,
such as proportional or fixed, are useful if you have text of different
sizes in the same line.

However, if you want to fine-tune the professional way, then
set the line spacing to leading and the default measurement in text
documents to points. Font sizes usually are set in point, and leading
usually is set in relation to font size, so this customization allows you
to control line space with greater precision. If the spacing between
lines is the same as the font size, professional designers describe a
paragraph as "set solid". If both the font and the leading are 12 points,
it is notated as 12/12. Very few fonts, though, are at their best when
set solid. Most fonts require leading that is greater than the font
size. For the average body text of 10 to 12 points, usually 1-3 extra
points of leading are ideal.

You also can use a default measurement of points to give a document
extra polish by setting all paragraphs to a horizontal grid. To create
a horizontal grid, set the Size on the Font tab, Line spacing, Above
paragraph and Below paragraph settings for each paragraph to be a
multiple of the same number. For example, if the chosen number is 6,
then the size of a heading paragraph style might be 18 points, the Above
paragraph setting 12 points, the Below paragraph setting 6 points and
the leading 24 points. Do the same for each paragraph, and the result is
a more uniform look to your document. You can improve the grid even more
by selecting the Register True option on the Indents and Spacing tab,
so that lines on separate pages are aligned.
Positioning Between Pages
One of the major compromises in a word processor is how breaks between
pages or columns are handled. On the one hand, related material should
be kept together. On the other hand, a regular page design means ending
the lines on the page in as close to the same position as possible. The
settings on the Text Flow tab of a Writer paragraph are designed to
balance these two demands automatically, so that users have to intervene
as little as possible with manual page breaks.

The Options section on the Text Flow contains the basic tools for
balancing the two demands. The Do Not Split option is especially important
for heading styles, because dividing a heading over a page means it is
less useful as a guide for readers. Because headings are related closely
to the text beneath them, most heading styles also should have
the Keep with next paragraph option selected.

Similarly, Orphan control and Widow generally should be used by each body
style. These are old printing terms. They refer, respectively, to lines
abandoned by the rest of the paragraph to sit at the top of a new page by
themselves, and lines left behind while the rest of the paragraph goes on
to another page. Ignoring single-line paragraphs, such as most headers,
the convention is that no orphan or widow should be less than two lines
long. However, some designers prefer three, and a larger setting might be
desirable if the average paragraph length is long. The only time when you might
want to ignore orphans and widows is in a document designed to be read
on-line, where standards are looser. Even on-line, though, controlling
orphans and widows are one of the small touches that improve the overall design.

A slightly different category is the break settings. Break settings can be used
to start a new page or column each time a style is used. This
ability can be useful whenever you want a style to start a new page
automatically. For example, if you were typing recipes and wanted each
recipe to start on a new page, you could create an automatic page break
for the heading that introduced each recipe. One especially useful
feature is the ability to set up a break that not only is associated
with a paragraph style but automatically chooses the page style that
follows the break.
Conclusion
As with font selection, setting the positioning options is partly a
matter of aesthetics. A still larger part is the constraints you are
working under, such as the page width or the total number of pages. Yet
the largest part of all is knowledge of what you are doing--knowledge
not only of the traditions of design but also of the tools now available. By
learning the options for positioning paragraphs, you not only can improve
the look of your documents but automate them to such an extent that
entire areas of formatting, including tabs, hyphenation and page breaks,
largely can be ignored as you work.

Bruce Byfield was a manager at Stormix Technologies and Progeny
Linux Systems and a Contributing Editor at Maximum
Linux. Away from his
desktop, he listens to punk-folk music, raises parrots and runs long,
painful distances of his own free will. He currently is writing a book
on OpenOffice.org.