Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi OO-friends

I prefer a certain position of bullets in text, but I am unable to fix it.

Whenever I write a new text there appears the preconceived bullet position of OpenOffice, and I have always the same boring task to take the necessary steps to build up my own constellation. I see just no way to store it.

Has anybody a better solution? I would appreciate your help.
Oppofix

How do you edit the Bullet style?

Whenever I write a new text there appears the preconceived bullet position of OpenOffice, and I have always the same boring task to take the necessary steps to build up my own constellation. I see just no way to store it.

Has anybody a better solution? I would appreciate your help.

Please upload your ODF type sample file here.

Modify one of the list styles in a new document and save the document as a template. Use the template to create new documents. The new documents will have the modified list style. Apply the modified list style instead of using the Bullets button on the Toolbar.

(To RoryOF:) I edit the bullet style as usual by going in the menu to „Format“ → „Bullets and Numbering“ → „Position“. And I could not find any way to fix the new position of the bullets.

To use a template, as Bill proposes, would be an escape, but it would prescribe and freeze in this template other settings too.

The proposal of Zizi64 seems promising, but I must confess that I do not know what the „type sample file hare“ is.

Oppofix

Oppofix wrote:[...]
The proposal of Zizi64 seems promising, but I must confess that I do not know what the „type sample file hare“ is.

"Hare" is a typo for "here". We need to see a sample of what you are working with, to better understand your issue.

Find a file displaying the issue. Make a simple mockup if you can't upload one of your files to a public place. Post a reply here, where you upload the file as an attachment. See the "Upload attachment" tab below the post edit pane.

Sorry for the typo. The ODF is: Open Document Format. It is the native, default file format of the AOO/LO. The ODF is an International Standard: ISO/IEC 26300:2006

Oppofix wrote:[...]
To use a template, as Bill proposes, would be an escape, but it would prescribe and freeze in this template other settings too.
[...]

If you want an easily accessible list setup different from the default, there is no way to avoid styles and templates. (Not that I know of.)

There is no need to employ the full template, if you don't want to. If your template is registered with OpenOffice (saved/imported to the templates folder), you can copy individual styles from that template to your own document. Click the pulldown arrow at the rightmost tool icon in the "Styles and formatting" toolbox (that toolbox is found by menu selection Format - Styles and formatting, and also as the second tool in the right side panel).

To adjust a single set of bullets

1. Highlight the bullets
2. Format > Bullets and numbering > Position. Adjust as required.
To change the template see Creating numbered or bulleted lists in Chapter 3 - Working with Text which includes

Additional information on lists, in particular the technique to create your own list style, is described in Chapter 7 - Working with Styles.

Showing that a problem has been solved helps others searching so, if your problem is now solved, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

Oppofix wrote:To use a template, as Bill proposes, would be an escape, but it would prescribe and freeze in this template other settings too.

It's not an "escape". A template is what is used when you want documents to start with non-default settings. There is no other way to save your non-default settings. The "other settings" that are "prescribed" and "frozen" in the template are the other default settings which you would have in any other document started without using a template. If you don't use a template, then you just have to be satisfied with changing the settings in every new document.

Hi friends,

in comparable cases OpenOffice supplies simple storage options for just the wanted setting. For example, if I want to present my writing in bold font, there is no need to prepare for this option a separate template.

Its just not comprehensible that OO introduces for the user the possibility to store the line space (by going to "paragraph"), but requires for the common position of bullets, without indent, each time a cumbersome new selection procedure.

I think there is a constructional task for developers open, a problem that could an should be picked up.

Sorry for the stubbornnes I show "hare"
Oppofix

It's not likely to happen soon. The feature was requested in 2002. In 2010 the comment "This issue is not solved yet due to limited resources" was made on the feature request. Resources today are even more limited.

Issue 9437 - Change default bullet type

Helloh friends,

I think that Bill has hit the nail on the head: "This issue is not solved . . ."

And I think the whole church, we all, must see, that a more simple software solution to fix the bullet position is since two decades on the OO agenda. To build a template, as shown here by several helpful contributions, is of course possible, but it remains second choice.

As Bill says: Resources are limited. So I have to appreciate, a little sad, the final "unsolved"-result of the debate - - with the "solved"-stamp.

Oppofix

It is easy to customise a template, and select that for use; one can have many templates and easily choose between them, overriding the default, which you could and should set to reflect your most usual default conditions. This is the simplest way to approach your problem.

It seems to be best practice to demand from a questioner at first complicated descriptions (how do you arrive at your problem?) instead of trying an answer. And to close the debate (which in this case has shown a real lack, an over two decades unsolved system bug of OpenOffice, see Bill) with a blessing and a patchwork of replace settings. Would it not be better, to keep an open mind for the real solution?
Oppofix

It seems to be best practice to demand from a questioner at first complicated descriptions (how do you arrive at your problem?) instead of trying an answer. And to close the debate (which in this case has shown a real lack, an over two decades unsolved system bug of OpenOffice, see Bill) with a blessing and a patchwork of replace settings. Would it not be better, to keep an open mind for the real solution?

Try the LibreOffice. The LO has a much larger development team.

Oppofix wrote:It seems to be best practice to demand from a questioner at first complicated descriptions (how do you arrive at your problem?) instead of trying an answer. And to close the debate (which in this case has shown a real lack, an over two decades unsolved system bug of OpenOffice, see Bill) with a blessing and a patchwork of replace settings. Would it not be better, to keep an open mind for the real solution?
Oppofix

How I approach the solution of a problem is my prerogative. I asked my initial question as it was significant information - I could not return to it as I was off-line due to cataract operations, absence from home, and post-operative limited close-up visibility, which continues now and will continue for the next six or so weeks until I am fitted with custom reading glasses.

There is an answer, as I outlined - this is the "real solution". That it does not suit _YOU_ is _YOUR_ problem, perhaps reflecting an imperfect understanding of how to use Styles and Templates in OO.

Using a predefined template does not provide any defaults changed from the original template on which it was based, unless you have edited these. So if one edits the default tab stop and other details for the Bullets setting, these will be the only change such a modified and Saved template will provide that differ from the default settings of OpenOffice.

Why should I, or any one, care about you saving a few clicks to solve _YOUR_ problem your way? There is an adequate solution if you apply it.

Dear RoryOF, I am really sorry for my misconduct in relation to your temporary health restrictions - my only excuse is, that I did not know of them. And perhaps you were too dutiful to let me without an immediate answer.

From a technical point of view you and other contributors are absolutely right: there is the way out, just by constructing a template. The question is exactly, as you phrased it clearly, of "saving a few clicks to solve".

Oppofix