styles in text boxes

users
#1

I mentioned "irritations" in another post, so thought maybe I'll give one explicitly, as I've bumped into it (afresh) this week.

Why are text styles not available to use within text boxes?

I have a small project (I'm using Draw, but the problem also exists in Writer and presumably the other components) that involves documents with a number of text boxes with formatted text within. There's no problem manually making chunks of text within each box bold/italic/large/wierd font/whatever.

However, I'd like to use styles to ensure consistency, and this appears simply impossible - only one style, the box style, is available (in Draw, but not Writer!) and that affects all text(*) within the given box. In Draw, the stylist simply doesn't offer paragraph or character styles; in Writer, they're greyed out when inside a text box.

The maddening thing is that styles (automatically generated) are clearly used internally to handle the [manual] formatting -- AFAICS it's just the interface that doesn't offer the knobs and twiddlies needed.

Thoughts?

(*) other than text to which the user has applied manual character formatting.

#2

Why are text styles not available to use within text boxes?

...

However, I'd like to use styles to ensure consistency, and this appears
simply impossible - only one style, the box style, is available (in
Draw, but not Writer!) and that affects all text(*) within the given
box.

You are right and it is a bit surprising. Talking about Writer, Insert > Frame does support styles properly, i.e. both paragraph and frame styles. That seems to me a great alternative for Writer.

About text boxes: it looks a bit Q&D, clearing formatting leaves text as Times New Roman - a font I banned many years ago and isn't even on my system.

#3

"Mike Scott":

I mentioned "irritations" in another post, so thought maybe I'll give
one explicitly, as I've bumped into it (afresh) this week.

Why are text styles not available to use within text boxes?

Draw textboxes have a combination of graphic style, text style for the entire frame and individual styles for each of the content paragraphs.

The user interface for Draw and Impress was for the last time touched in 2000s though, I believe.

#4

Why are text styles not available to use within text boxes?

...

However, I'd like to use styles to ensure consistency, and this appears
simply impossible - only one style, the box style, is available (in
Draw, but not Writer!) and that affects all text(*) within the given
box.

You are right and it is a bit surprising. Talking about Writer, Insert >
Frame does support styles properly, i.e. both paragraph and frame
styles. That seems to me a great alternative for Writer.

I've just had a look, and I'm really not clear about the distinction between a "text box" and a "frame" in Writer (and dare I ask why Draw doesn't offer a 'frame'?). It looks as though, although the proffered controls differ, both are implemented the same way - a simple example shows each is a "text box" contained within a "frame" - this example has some text, a text box, and a frame with some text typed into it:

<office:text>

<text:sequence-decls></text:sequence-decls>

<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame1" text:anchor-type="page" text:anchor-page-number="1" svg:x="2.327cm" svg:y="7.456cm" svg:width="7.001cm" draw:z-index="1">

<draw:text-box fo:min-height="0.499cm">

<text:p text:style-name="P2">Here is a frame</text:p>

</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>

<draw:frame text:anchor-type="page" text:anchor-page-number="1" draw:z-index="0" draw:style-name="gr1" svg:width="10.011cm" svg:height="1.146cm" svg:x="2.187cm" svg:y="4.175cm">

<draw:text-box>

<text:p>Here is a text box</text:p>

</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>

<text:p text:style-name="P1">Here is some text</text:p>

<text:p text:style-name="P1"/>
</office:text>

From what I remember, Draw used the same xml construct.

But why then the distinction between a "frame" and a "text box" (the latter term clearly/not/corresponding to the internal entity of the same name)?

About text boxes: it looks a bit Q&D, clearing formatting leaves text as
Times New Roman - a font I banned many years ago and isn't even on my
system.

A more general question: why are there two distinct components, "Writer" and "Draw"? I know historically that text processing and graphics were distinct, but I've felt for a long time that these two are converging - Writer offers a poor-man's graphic facility, and Draw a poor text-processing facility. Ought the two not merge and give all the features of each package in one program?