How to create an OpenOffice pecha template

From Digital Tibetan
Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Creating a pecha template

Note: Creating a pecha template is a quite time-consuming task. However, remember that this only needs to be done once for each pecha style. Afterwards you can just re-use existing pecha-templates.

  1. Plan a pecha layout by e.g. taking measures of an existing pecha. A very good source for sample pechas is TBRC. See the following example.
  2. Create a new empty OpenOffice Writer document. The first step is to change the page format into pecha style. For our purposes we generate pechas of size 29.5 cm x 7 cm. That way we can fit exactly three pecha pages on one A4 landscape page.

We will now look at the steps to create a pecha like the example above:

Creating a pecha title page

Creating the empty page

In OpenOffice enable "Format / Styles and Formatting (F11)". This displays a window that can list paragraph, character or page styles.

Select the page styles (marked by red circle):

Pic 2: OpenOffice page style formats.

Then right click the page format "First Page" and select "modify...". Adapt the page format to the following dimensions:

Pic 3: The first empty page.

Double click "First Page" in the page style select--now your OpenOffice document has the dimensions of a pecha page with a text field that will be used to enter the pecha's title.

Creating the pecha frames

Note: If you do not want to manually create the multiple frames yourself, you can simply download the OpenOffice file below.

We now need a number of red frames to draw the pecha borders. Draw a few red rectangles (color dark red, line width 0,02cm, no filling). Right-click the rectangle and select "Position and Size". Create red rectangles with the following sizes:

Outer frames:

Inner frames:

Separators:

You should then have an empty page like this:

Pic 4: The first page with pecha frames.

Creating the second page with an image ornament

Creating the empty 2nd page

Position the cursor on page 1 and select "New Style from Selection" within the "Styles and Formatting" Window of OpenOffice:

Pic 5: Create a new page style for page 2.

Name the new page style "Tibetan Pecha Page with Image". Right-click this style and select "Modify". We need to adapt the page-borders which are different for this page.

Pic 6: Creating the page format for page 2.

The right-click the page-style "First Page", select "Modify" and click the "Organizer"-tab:

Pic 7: Linking "First Page" format with "Tibetan Pecha Page with Image.

This links the "First Page" with "Tibetan Pecha Page with Image" as the following page. If you now position the cursor in page 1 and press "Return" a few times, the second page gets created and is automatically formatted as "Tibetan Pecha Page with Image":

Pic 8: The second pecha page.

2nd page frames and the yigo character

We now create the frames for the second page:

Select the same rectangle style as above and create rectangles with the following dimensions:

Outer frames:

Inner frames:

Separators:

Next, we need a white rectangle, which will be used to prevent the text from running into the image in the middle:

Right-click the white rectangle and select:

Then we insert a text-frame for the yigo (yig mgo) character: ༄༅། །
Select "Insert / Frame ..." and create a text frame with the following dimensions:

Pic 9: The yigo text frame dimensions.

Additionally you need to set the Borders to "None" (click on the "Border" tap).

Once the text-frame has been created, right-click it and select "Wrap / Page Wrap". This will cause the Tibetan text to flow around the yigo character.

Click into the text box and insert the Tibetan characters for the yigo: ༄༅། །
By now two pages of the template are almost finished:

Pic 10: Two pages with frames and yigo.

Creating the following pages

Creating the Empty standard pecha page

Position the cursor into page two and create a new page style by selecting "New Style from Selection" within the "Styles and Formatting" Window of OpenOffice. Name the new style "Tibetan Pecha Standard Page".

Right-click this style and select "Modify". We need to adapt the borders and header-settings which are different for this page:

Pic 11: Page borders of standard page.
Pic 12: Page header of standard page.

Now right-click the page-style "Tibetan Pecha Page with Image" and select "Modify..." and the "Organizer"-Tab. Select as "Next Style" our newly created "Standard Pecha Page". This way we defined that the subsequent page to page 2 of our pecha will be a "Standard Pecha Page".

Then right-click "Standard Pecha Page", select "Modify...", "Organizer-Tab", and select as "Next Style" "Standard Pecha Page". This way all following pages will have the style "Standard Pecha Page".

Note: In OpenOffice there are two ways to define the page style for a given position in a document:

We now insert a few empty newlines to create two new pages which will automatically receive the page-style "Standard Pecha Page" (see image 11):

Pic 11: Empty "Standard Pecha Pages"

Now will will prepare the frames for the "Standard Pecha Page":

Pic 11: Create a frame that will serve as anchor for the pecha-border frames."

You should now see a 0,80 x 0,83 text frame to the right of the page header.

Outer border-frame:

Repeat the insertion of another similar rectangle with the following dimensions for the inner frames:

Now repeat the same procedure we did for page 3 for page 4.

The easiest way is: select the anchor frame to the left of the page 3 header, and copy it. Position the cursor into the header of page 4 and select "Edit / Insert". That copies the anchor frame together with two pecha-border-frames.

Now copy the yiggo frame from page 2 and insert it into page 3. Right-click the yiggo frame on page 3 and select "Anchor / To Paragraph". Now "Edit / Cut" the yiggo frame, and put the cursor into the header of page 3 and select "Edit / Insert". That re-inserts the yiggo frame, anchored to the page header of page 3. Now move the yiggo frame to the upper left corner of pecha page 3 inside the border frames.

The result should look like image 12:

Pic 12: The "Standard Pecha Pages" with border frames and yiggo

Now the last thing we need in order to finish our template are page numbers and left-border titles:

Insert the following objects:

Western page number:

Tibetan left-border place-holder titles:

Tibetan page numbers:

Western left border title:

For each new pecha the titles would be edited and adapted accordingly.

Done! The template is now ready and should look like this (image 13):

Pic 13: The completed template

As next steps you can follow:

Internal Links

External Links

Retrieved from "http://www.digitaltibetan.org/index.php/How_to_create_an_OpenOffice_pecha_template"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox