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List:       koffice
Subject:    KWord template experiences - continued
From:       Anders Lund <temp_and () tiscali ! dk>
Date:       2002-09-21 22:32:52
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Hi,
I updated to the release branch as you suggested, and sat down to try 
producing a resonable "Personal letter" template again.

First, I wanted to create the header for the initial page following the hints 
in the manual - using an inline table within the header. Tables does not 
render correctly if I want to use a frame style with only single border, so I 
decided to use some frames instead.
As the header refuses to accept inline frames, I had to just create my frames, 
move them to the desired position and then resize the header to cover the 
required height. This means that I can't change page format with good 
results, as my header are statically positioned frames.
Consequently, I have to suggest that it should be posssible to place inline 
frames in the header/footer frames.

Next, I created two inline frames for the recipient address and the date, 
which went well, and the letter template text, simply

Dear <reciepient>,
<letter text here>

Yours sincearly

My Name

- which of cause also works fine. The next task was to create the 
header/footer for additional pages, and here I ran into a problem. Adding a 
hard frame break, setting the correct document settings (different 
header/footer for first page) and editing the header/footer on the second 
page works fine (page number in the header and my address on a single line in 
the footer), but if I remove the hard frame break before saving the template, 
the header/footer template for the consecutive pages is lost, whereas if I 
keep the hard frame break, I get an undesired empty page when creating a new 
document from the template.
So, I suggest that document level information such as header/footer contents 
are stored at document level, which would solve that problem if I understand 
things correctly.
Note: I can save the template with the second page, and just delete the hard 
frame break as my first editing, and the header/footer on consecutive pages 
will appear correctly - working, but not really satisfying.

During the creation of my template, I recreated it several times, as I got 
clearer as to how I wanted it (for example I removed unused styles, and added 
new ones in that process) and I experienced that
* overwriting a template does not work - the old one tends to stay.
* to remove a template, I had to choose "file->create template from document" 
and remove the template, click Ok, then activate the menu item once more and 
readd the template.

I suggest that should be brought to work, and I hope in the future to find 
some means of editing a template directly - among idears could be some kind 
of template specific variable, that could hint the user about the idear of a 
specific element of the document, it could be rendered with a different 
background, and selected to be overwritten when clicked.

Another thing is that I have tried using properties from the "Document 
information" group in the header/footer, but kword does not seem to recognice 
them untill I open the dialog and presses the OK button. The information 
appears in the dialog, variables are not correctly substituted untill I 
confirm it. This seems to work in other koffice applications (kspread, 
kpresenter) though.
I also think a dialog to edit the global koffice document information would be 
nice, so that this information could be altered on a pr document basis 
without changing the users defaults.

I also have some problems with the grid: If the grid has any size, the 
formatting of frames and table cells with automatic height goes wrong, the 
resizing when adding a line break is influenced by the grid size, so that I 
often see extra space. I think the grid should only apply to manually 
positioned/sized elements.

Finally, I have experienced problems with some fonts: when using a custom 
bullet from one of the symbol fonts (Symbol[URW], Symbol[Adope], Zapf 
Dingbats etc) they don't get printed; neither does some formula characters 
(from the same group of fonts, I think). Is that a commonly known issue, or a 
local misconfiguration (in that case hints on how to fix it would be greatly 
appreciated)?

With all those problems mentioned, I can say that I do now own a well working 
"personal letter" template, as well as some knowledge about creating 
templates for KWord. Apart from the fact that one has to figure out what to 
avoid, KWord is pretty usefull, the most crusial problem seems to be the 
table issues.

-anders


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