Writer Guide

For more sophisticated control of the size of the object, select Format
> Object > Position and Size from the menu bar. Use the Position
and Size dialog box to set the width and height independently. If the
Keep ratio option is selected, then the two dimensions change so that
the proportion is maintained, allowing for a scaled resizing.
Grouping drawing objects
To group drawing objects:
1) Select one object, then hold down the Shift key and select the
others you want to include in the group. The bounding box
expands to include all the selected objects.
2) With the objects selected, hover the mouse pointer over one of
the objects and choose Format > Group > Group from the menu
bar or right-click and choose Group > Group from the pop-up
menu.
Note
You cannot include an embedded or linked graphic in a group
with drawing objects.
Positioning graphics within the text
When you add a graphic to a text document, you need to choose how to
position the graphic with respect to the text and other graphics. The
positioning of graphics is often rather time-consuming and may be very
frustrating for both inexperienced and experienced users. As Writer is
a word processor rather than a desktop publishing program, there are
some limitations to the flexibility in positioning images and it takes
time to get things exactly as you would like them. Starting from
OpenOffice.org 3.0, this task is considerably improved by the inclusion
of a new option that allows a “loose anchoring”.
Positioning of a graphic is controlled by working on four areas:
• Arrangement refers to the placement of a graphic on an
imaginary vertical axis. Arrangement controls how graphics are
stacked upon each other or relative to the text.
• Alignment refers to the vertical or horizontal placement of a
graphic in relation to the chosen anchoring point.
• Anchoring refers to the reference point for the graphics. This
point could be the page, or frame where the object is, a
paragraph, or even a character.
Chapter 8 Working with Graphics 279