Frames v text boxes

users
#1

Is the a guide ( or knowledgeable person ) that can show the
pros and cons of frames v text boxes.  I have always generally
used frames but ex Word users seem obsessed with text boxes
and end up getting themselves in a terrible pickle !

Ta

Mal

#2

Is there a guide ( or knowledgeable person ) that can show the pros and cons of frames v text boxes.

I'm guessing you mean in an ordinary text (Writer) document - in which case LibreOffice calls these "text objects", not "text boxes". A text box is something you can insert into a form.

A guide? There are probably a few:

o Create examples of each and use the Format or context (right-click) menu to investigate what is possible with each.

o Look up "frames" and "text objects" in the help text.

o Look up "frames" and "text objects" in the Writer Guide.

A knowledgeable person? That's probably not me, but I'd suggest that text objects may be useful for the odd piece of disconnected, displayed text, whereas frames are a much more flexible way to handle blocks of text. In particular:

o Text objects can be rotated, whereas frames appear not to have this facility.

o Frames - and their names - show up in the Navigator, which provides additional functionality.

o Frames have their own category of styles, and - as with all styles - frame styles allow you to format multiple frames identically and indeed to modify your choices very much more easily and reliably.

o Frames can be given hyperlinks.

o Frames can be protected and can be hidden.

o The printing of frames can be suppressed.

o Frames can be linked. This powerful facility allows you to distribute a single body of text between different parts of a document - even on widely separated pages - but still have the text flow naturally between the frames in a chain as you modify the text.

I have always generally used frames but ex Word users seem obsessed with text boxes and end up getting themselves in a terrible pickle !

Do you need to educate them?

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker

#3

Is there a guide ( or knowledgeable person ) that can show the pros
and cons of frames v text boxes.

.....

A knowledgeable person? That's probably not me, but I'd suggest that
text objects may be useful for the odd piece of disconnected, displayed
text, whereas frames are a much more flexible way to handle blocks of
text. In particular:

o Text objects can be rotated, whereas frames appear not to have this
facility.

The interesting thing is that internally text boxes and frames appear to be pretty well identical in structure. Each appears implemented in the xml as a "<draw:text>" item within a "<draw:frame>" item.

However, the frame's frame has a style derived from the "Frame" style; the text box's frame's style has no parent. A quick bit of editing on content.xml to graft in the text box's style name (gr1 in my case) instead of the frame's style (fr1) converts the frame into a text box -- no outside border, and rotations allowed. I have no idea what it might be about the "Frame" style that disallows rotation. (Or, indeed, why anyone would wish to disallow this in the first place.)

I'm sure this must be documented somewhere. All I've done is look at content.xml, and potter a bit for a few minutes, so may well be missing something important.