LibreOffice Writer Technical writing and user manuals Part 4

Continued from LibreOffice Writer: Technical writing and user manuals Part 3

Diagrams and Figures

It is almost best to create diagrams and figures in a dedicated program like Dia, Inkscape, or Gimp and embed or import the image to your writer document.

However, for simple illustrations, you can add callouts using Writers Shape (Line, Basic, Symbol) tools.

Formatting code and markup

Writer comes with two styles for formatting code and markup. You can use either the Preformatted Text or the Source Text style. The first DOCTYPE in the screen short uses the Source Text style and the second DOCTYPE uses the Preformatted T ext format.

Most documentation, however, use color coded styles for markup and code to allow readers to easily identify tags and elements. Most IDEs and text editors include plugins for exporting the code to .rtf for copying to word processors.

For more details about this type of plugin, refer to Quick Fix: Retaining Notepad ++ styles for Microsoft Word using the NppExport plugin.

You can also create your own style for markup and code. The following example uses an adjusted left and right indent with a gray background and increased paragraph spacing, in addition to the Preformatted Text style.

Adjusting default PDF view

As with LyX and Adobe Acrobat, you can configure how the PDF appears when opened on a PC. You can select what Panes are displayed and the page magnification of the PDF from the Initial View tab in PDF Options. 

Note that these settings do not apply to all PDF viewers. They are not supported in most apps that open PDFs.

Linking to headings and bookmarks

Bookmarks work in Writer the same way they work in HTML. You insert a Bookmark into any part of the document and then use the Cross-reference option to link to the word, line, or paragraph.

You can directly link to a heading using the Cross-reference option under the Insert menu, however, without having to insert a Bookmark first.

To add a reference to a Heading:

1. Place the insertion point in the paragraph where you would like to insert the reference.

2. Click Insert > Cross-reference. 

3. select Headings from the Type and select the Heading from the list.

4. To insert the text heading, select Reference from the Insert reference to box. You can also include the Chapter number.