Strange line spacing

users
#1

I have installed the latest safe edition of LibreOffice on my wife's new
Windows 10 machine and she is getting very strange behaviour in
connection with line spacing.

She is used to putting two carriage returns between paragraphs, as I am,
but what happens is that, when she inserts one return, the text moves
down to the next line. When she inserts two, it jumps down an AWFULLY
long way. The cursor also appears to be set for about 72 point
typeface, which I suspect is part of the problem. When she inserts two
returns, the second one appears below where the bottom of the previous
one was.

I have suggested that we change the paragraph format to include a few
milimetres of space below the text of a paragraph but this does not
solve the problem of inserting two carriage returns.

I don't seem able to replicate the problem on my Mac, which is running
version 5.0.0.5 (don't know offhand what version she is using, but I
downloaded it a couple of weeks ago).

As always when something goes wrong, she's working under extreme time
press and needs to get an exam paper prepared for tomorrow, so I'd
appreciate it if someone can help fairly quickly.

Thanks in advance.

#2

Hello,

It could be a font substitution problem. Are you sure the font you are
using is installed on the "new" Windows 10 machine? It may be that the
font you are requesting in your document does not exist on your PC and
when the font is substituted by LO, you get something that has this
behaviour. This could explain why it is working correctly on your Mac
since the font is most probably installed there.

I hope this helps.

Rémy Gauthier.

> I have installed the latest safe edition of LibreOffice on my wife's

new

Windows 10 machine and she is getting very strange behaviour in
connection with line spacing.

> She is used to putting two carriage returns between paragraphs, as I

am,

but what happens is that, when she inserts one return, the text moves
> down to the next line.  When she inserts two, it jumps down an

AWFULLY

long way.  The cursor also appears to be set for about 72 point
> typeface, which I suspect is part of the problem.  When she inserts

two

> returns, the second one appears below where the bottom of the

previous

one was.

I have suggested that we change the paragraph format to include a few
milimetres of space below the text of a paragraph but this does not
solve the problem of inserting two carriage returns.

> I don't seem able to replicate the problem on my Mac, which is

running

#3

Thanks, Remi, for taking the time to answer.

It is definitely a font problem, but not of the nature you hypothesized. We
managed to get her document finished by the simple expedient of inserting
one letter on the blank lines before making the second carriage return - or
whatever it is called in the post-typewriter age. We could then remove
these extra letters when the document was finished without losing the single
line spacing she wanted.

I have now experimented on a copy of her file. She is, btw, using version
5.2.2.2.

Near the start of her document, after the title, she had written the letter
'A' (to indicate the first section of the exam) and increased the size of
this from 12 pt to 26 pt. She had then continued with explanatory text in
12 pt text on the same line and the following one. When she then did her
two carriage returns, the first one placed her one standard line down, the
second one gave her a huge line space, which I suspect is the line spacing
she would get with 26 pt text. It looked like this (I'll use underscores to
show the 26 pt letter).

_A_ Instructions on what to do in the exam which wrapped over onto a second
line which I'm trying desperately to make this example show.
(first line would appear 12 pt below the word 'show')

(Second line would appear 26 pt below the first line)

(All subsequent text shows the same problem)

I found that, if I changed the size of this initial letter to 12 pt, the
problem went away. If I reinstated the 26 pt letter, it returned. Moving
the letter 'A' to its own line did not affect the situation, that is to say
when I went to the end of the explanatory paragraph, I still got 26 pt line
spacing, even if I had changed the font size to 12 pt after the letter 'A'
but on the same line.

So problem is explained, if not solved. It seems as though the document has
somehow absorbed the fact that this paragraph started with a letter in 26pt
and starts all subsequent paragraphs the same way. The style was Standard.

If anyone has anything to add, I'd very much appreciate it. My wife was
hopping mad last night and threatening to buy Microsoft Office, but had
calmed down a bit today, and I hope I'll be able to keep her on LibreOffice
after my explanation.

#4

Sorry for top posting, but I didn't have a reply to the post, except to say
that I tried to reproduce your problem on LO 5.2.2.2 on MacOS and couldn't
get the behavior you describe using any combination of order of entering
and formatting characters. Perhaps if you describe your sequence of steps
to get the problem, someone could help.

By the way, this shows how typewriter thinking still pervades the word
processing world. The preferable way of working is to enter your text
first, then format it to look the way you want, instead of formatting along
the way. (No flames, please. Of course, there are exceptions.)

#5

Thanks, Jomali.

I must admit I was more interested in investigating the document in question
than in trying to reproduce the problem. My mistake.

It's good to know you couldn't reproduce it. I think I'm just going to say
that this is a one-off, and I don't know how it happened. There were so
many funny things about this document, not least that it existed about a
page and a half past the end of the document. I'll rephrase that! About a
page and a half past the last text. And this part of the document clearly
had a variety of settings, as the values when I called up format paragraph
were all empty, which usually happens when you have different fonts,
different varieties of the font (regular, bold, etc) and different sizes.

But again, thanks a lot for trying.

#6

Let me echo Jomali's advice about formatting after typing. I would go
one step further and highly recommend learning how to use paragraph
styles. I confess it can take time to learn, which we typically don't
have when we're just trying to get a job done before a deadline. In that
case, it's too easy to revert to older familiar methods, in which case
we never learn better, more efficient ways to get the job done.

Even if you don't use styles, one thing you can do right away is stop
using carriage returns to add space between paragraphs. Instead, go into
"Format" "Paragraph" and then click on "Indents & Spacing". In that
dialog box, you can add spacing before or after a paragraph so that you
don't have a bunch of empty paragraph carriage returns.

Yes, it takes longer. Yes, it can mess you up when you *don't* want
extra space between paragraphs (which is why I recommend learning
paragraph styles). But, it can solve a whole host of other problems.

As to your particular document, I'm wondering if it originated in
LibreOffice or was imported from Word or another word processor. I can
imagine strange things happening with a document coming from another
word processor.

Another thought is that there may be some paragraph style based
formatting mixed in with your direct typewriter based formatting.
Sometimes, paragraph styles automatically call a different style upon
pressing "enter". For example, you might want your Title paragraph style
to automatically be followed by a Subtitle paragraph style, so that,
when you press "enter" at the end of the Title, your font and other
formatting will automatically change to that provided by "Subtitle".

As a test, you might see what happens in the Style list in the
Formatting Toolbar as you press "enter". If it changes names, then you
have a style issue going on. Also, place the cursor in each paragraph
and see if the style name changes from paragraph to paragraph. If it
does, then you may have some unwanted paragraph styles in the document.

Virgil

#7

Absolutely right, Virgil, and that's the advice I gave when we discovered the
problem. That's the way I work: a composition phase followed by a
formatting phase. And, yes, I do, on bigger jobs, create paragraph breaks
through, usually, paragraph formatting, sometimes with styles. Personally I
usually go for a 1 cm (or so) first line indent and no extra line break.

However, this was, as you said, a rush job, and all the worse for my wife
not having used LO before.

Your comment on the source is quite possibly also valid, for the first thing
she did was to import the school logo at the top of the document from an old
docx Word document. I hadn't actually thought about that, and that could
account for the problem. Perhaps a way round this in future if she imports
anything from Word might be to select and copy all from the Word document,
and paste special, I think it is, into the .odt document.

#8

Yes, anytime I copy anything from a Word file, I paste it using "paste
special" and then "unformatted text." Word and LO work differently
enough that the last thing I want is Word's formatting codes messing up
my styles.

I'm not sure how it happened, but I'd bet that the .docx school logo is
what messed you up. It may be that, by copying that image, you copied a
lot of other stuff as well.

Virgil

#9

For your information, it seems I have the behaviour with LO 5.1.3.2 (on
W10) and 5.2.2.2 (on Linux). What is interesting is that it occurs
regardless of the letter that is larger in size (e.g. in the sentence
"This is a test", you will see it happen when the point size of the
letter 's' is changed). This does not occur when Drop Caps is used.

Rémy Gauthier.

> Yes, anytime I copy anything from a Word file, I paste it using

"paste

special" and then "unformatted text." Word and LO work differently 
> enough that the last thing I want is Word's formatting codes messing

up

my styles.

> I'm not sure how it happened, but I'd bet that the .docx school logo

is

> what messed you up. It may be that, by copying that image, you copied

a

lot of other stuff as well.

Virgil

> > > Absolutely right, Virgil, and that's the advice I gave when we

discovered the

> problem.  That's the way I work:  a composition phase followed by a
> > > formatting phase.  And, yes, I do, on bigger jobs, create paragraph

breaks

> > > through, usually, paragraph formatting, sometimes with

styles.  Personally I

> > > usually go for a 1 cm (or so) first line indent and no extra line

break.

>
> > > However, this was, as you said, a rush job, and all the worse for

my wife

> not having used LO before.
>
> > > Your comment on the source is quite possibly also valid, for the

first thing

> > > she did was to import the school logo at the top of the document

from an old

> > > docx Word document.  I hadn't actually thought about that, and that

could

> > > account for the problem.  Perhaps a way round this in future if she

imports

> > > anything from Word might be to select and copy all from the Word

document,

> and paste special, I think it is, into the .odt document.
>
>
>
> --
> > > View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/

Strange-line-spacing-tp4200102p4200190.html

#10

I can't reproduce it on my system. LO 5.1.6.2, Ubuntu 14.04LTS

Virgil

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
It can take time to adjust to any new system, 'even' LibreOffice. The
changes between any version of MS Office and another are often troubling to
users too.

If you need "ammunition" then hopefully something below might help. I'm
not very diplomatic so you might need to assess and rephrase. I've not
succeeded in doing any decent migrations. People have simply refused to
even try it despite my attempts to make it as easy as possible for them.
So you have already done better than me.

One advantage that non-MS systems have is that between different versions
of the same software the look&feel and normal handling rarely changes.
Even moving from one non-MS system to another tends to involve a lot less
surprises and disruption. With non-MS systems new features tend to just
get added or existing ones get streamlined without radically changing the
whole look&feel of the entire system.

Formats tend to remain the same between different versions and, again,
between different non-MS systems. Non-MS systems tend to stick to
internationally agreed standards that have been decided by a committee of
hundreds of different companies and individuals. Any time one doesn't it's
fairly easy to let them know and they will try to correct it (just don't
hold your breath on it being done quickly). This may be one of those
times.

MS systems tend to change their format with each new version of their
software. They managed to get international agreement for one of their
formats but they haven't been able to implement it consistently between
different versions of their own software - instead they have various
"transitional" versions even though they use the same name for each
different format.

Another BIG advantage of NON-MS systems is that you can run old familiar
systems alongside new ones. Running 2 different versions of
LibreOffice/OpenOffice is possible although not completely
straight-forwards. More usefully it IS very easy to run LibreOffice
(and/or other non-MS system(s)) alongside MS Office.

So moving to LibreOffice can be a gentle "migration" rather than a forced
abrupt "switch" or one-step "move".

Trying to get 2 versions of MS Office running on one machine is almost
impossible and tends to involve crippling one of the versions.

So each move between different versions of MS Office is a forced switch to
an unfamiliar system.

There are many small advantages to LibreOffice/OpenOffice and to each
different non-MS system too but sometimes that can mean differences which
are often initially be seen as problematic.

One of the most useful (imo & ime) is the way "Styles" work. Even a quick
skim-read of the chapter on "Styles" in the "Getting Started" guide;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
and hasty edit of styles can save quite a lot of time, which i initially
used to read more about them and make more changes but soon realised that i
could easily get carried away with My first adjustments to my Styles made
the most impact for me.

So moving away from MS Office can be trouble-some at first but it's VERY
well worth making the move and there is a good argument for doing so by
migrating.

MS Office can be free for a 1 month trial period;
https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-365-home
but then it's a monthly rental with a 1 year commitment.

Many regards (and apols for the long posting) from
Tom :slight_smile: