making print on demand files

[mizkit]

I spent most of yesterday (work-time, anyway) turning the ORRSP and Year of Miracles into a POD for my non-e-reader family members. With a few minor exceptions that I may not be able to defeat because I’m using Open Office instead of a Proper Layout Program, I’m quite happy with it. In another life, this is what I do for a living.

The exceptions,

Comments

[ruford42]

Sorry, I don't know the answer questions. Though, it sounds
like you're trying to replace both Word and PageMaker/FrameMaker
with OO Writer. I'm no expert...heck, I' not even a bumbling
newbie, but wondering if you've looked at the free, open source
layout programs like Scribus?

[mizkit]

Nope, not familiar with Scribus, but perhaps I'll give it a poke, thanks!

Perhaps....

[axisor]

I don’t know about Open Office verse MS Office but as for the page numbers, you could at least get it to start the story at page 1 if you set it to start at 1 for a new section and set it up so that is the next section. There is also a “this page forward” option in page set up which may or may not be able to be restricted for headers and page numbers. I know it does work for margins and such.

As for the Table of Contents, I would recommend using the Column features as that could also be used for alignment. It also works fantastically for special projects if you realize you can click a box and keep it from restricting the column sizes to being the same size.

Re: Perhaps....

[mizkit]

Yeah, columns theoretically works, but for some reason I can't manage to do one page that has columns and the rest don't. I just make a hash of it. No idea why. :)

Re: Perhaps....

[axisor]

Several of my coworkers have that issue. At least in MS Word, if you select only the text you want, it limits the columns to that. Also, it might be useful to know that if you press ctrl+shift+enter you force a column break. I find having special characters on (ctrl+shift+8) makes it easier for me to see how the formatting is working.

hope that helps

[icedrake]

This might be of use: http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2005/12/different_page_.html Looks like this might take care of both the header and the numbering issues in one swell foop. (I'm testing in OOo 3.4)

I haven't tested the second one (baby demanding attention by getting into trouble, you know how that is), but the menu links look roughly the same in 3.4 as they do in the instructions, eventhough those are for 2.1
http://jorgenmodin.net/index_html/archive/2008/07/16/how-to-format-a-table-of-contents-in-openoffice-21

Hope that helps!

[mizkit]

Baby demanding attention is at least part of why I've been unable to suss out the numbering thing myself! Thank you, I'll give this a go. <3

[icedrake]

So, um... I left a comment, but I guess links are frowned upon by the spam filter. Look in the spam folder :)

[mizkit]

Got it! :)