Changing styles in Writer is frustrating

Yesterday, I tried to replicate a document I had made with Scribus, and, I found the process frustrating to say the least. Whenever I updated a style, or applied a style to a block of text, and it would:

  • Insert a unexpected frame around it.
  • Get combined with another block preceding it.
  • Mess up the margins or spacing for it.

I haven’t tried with Microsoft Word yet, but I’d imagine it would be less bug prone than Writer. I was able to get a good result with HTML and CSS though.

This forum is for working on LibreOffice documentation. Your topic seems like it would fit https://ask.libreoffice.org/ better, but you should also attach an example document that people can test with. Certainly the simple operation of changing a style will never insert any unexpected frames, so the document has some special structure that can’t be deduced from your description alone.

Suggest you import the file into LO Writer.
What kind of app is Scribus?

Regards
PeeWee
Technical Writer

No, there’s no special structure. I tried to replicate it from scratch. It’s my CV, so, there’s a fair bit of redacting to do, although I could attach that here, or in a new question at https://ask.libreoffice.org as you suggested.

Scribus is a desktop publishing application, similar to Adobe InDesign, and has an official website at https://www.scribus.net/.

Hello Ben

Thanks for the link to Scribus. Now downloaded on my Mac Mini M4. It will also be downloaded onto my Ubuntu notebook, then I can do a proper test and learn the software.
I did use DTP software many years ago. I interested in seeing how Scribus performs.

Regards
PeeWee
LO Technical Writer

Ok, here’s the redacted versions of my test document. I’ve included the PDF output from the Scribus document, as well as the HTML, and original Scribus document (with the .sla extension):

https://1drv.ms/f/c/0a0bdbf23ded06b0/IgDjLRqEXWOKQYTucdcjIwagAXe5lZM2BUxjl4uGhf281xA?e=bZDvxy

The HTML version looks different when printed, due to CSS rules.

I’ll admit, with Scribus, sometimes I used the story editor, and tweaked the vertical position of the text frames a little bit.

Once again, please understand that this is not the right place for this question.

Please, as mentioned, use ask.libreoffice.org, where there are people with extensive knowledge of using Writer.

No question was asked: I was giving feedback. I will use ask.libreoffice.org through, when I do have a question.

Can you be sure that your frustration isn’t due to not having a deeper understanding of how to use Writer?

I don’t think so. Even so, to reduce doubt, I’m going to re-post on ask.libreoffice.org, with the attachments. The topic here can be deleted, if need be.

Update: Re-posted on Ask: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/style-editing-ux-issues-in-writer/130818