Writer Guide

4) If the headings are aligned to the top of the cells, you may want to
change the alignment to the bottom of the cells, as shown in
Figure 228. To do this, click the Bottom button on the Table
toolbar or select Format> Alignment > Bottom from the main
menu.
Spacing options
Use the Spacing section of the Position page to control the spacing
between individual characters in the paragraph. When selecting an
option other than default in the drop-down menu, use the edit box to
enter the value in points by which you want to expand or condense the
text.
The Pair Kerning option (selected
by default) increases or decreases
the amount of space between certain
pairs of letters to improve the
overall appearance of the text.
Kerning automatically adjusts the
character spacing for specific letter
combinations. Kerning is only
available for certain font types and, for printed documents, only works
if your printer supports it.
Controlling tab stops
Although borderless tables are generally considered a much better
solution to space out material across a page, there are still many
situations where tabulations are sufficient to do what you need with
the added advantages of being simpler to manage and quicker to apply.
Tip
If you need to use tabs, and you will be sending a document to
other people, do not use the default tab stops. If the recipients
of the document have defined default tab stops that are
different from the ones you are using, the paragraph may look
very different on their machines. Instead, define the tab stops
explicitly in the paragraph or the paragraph style; then you
can be sure that everyone will see the same layout.
To define tab stops in your paragraph style, use the page shown in
Figure 231. Here you can choose the type of tab: left, right, centered,
or decimal; the character to be used as a decimal point; and the fill
character—the characters that appear between the end of the text
before the tab and the beginning of the text after the tab. You can also
238 OpenOffice.org 3.x Writer Guide
Figure 230: Kerning disabled
(left) and enabled (right).
Free eBook Edition