Academic reports and works must often follow very precise formatting guidelines. Such guidelines may require the use of so-called inline or run-in headings. The APA (American Psychologists Association) is one of these organizations.

What’s an inline heading ?

Aka “run-in” heading. This is a heading (outline) paragraph with a special formatting, so that the heading is not in a separate paragraph, as usually, but part of the text body that follows.

Here’s an example

Standard heading. The heading paragraphs are separated from the text body:

With inline heading (level 4 text is now in the same paragraph as the following body):

The problem

Unfortunately, LibreOffice and ApacheOpenOffice don’t provide a native functionality that covers this use case.

But, there’s a trick, as developed by user RGB in a forum thread (see Sources). The InLine Headings extension, that was designed with this trick in mind, aims at making the creation, modification and suppression of inline or run-in headings easy.

InLine Headings extension:

• Processes the current Writer document.

  The process covers the text body and sections. Note that tables, frames, headers and notes are not processed.

• Turns any heading paragraph level into an inline heading (levels 1..10).

• Can undo the inlining for easy document update or correction.

• Tries to create document backups before processing.

InLine Headings comes as a two-toolbuttons toolbar.

If the toolbar doesn’t appear, check the View > Toolbars menu.

Caution

The document process is extensive. This means that, in some contexts, things might go wrong. Even though I’ve tested this extension for a while without meeting any problem, and even though an attempt to backup the document is run before the actual process, I very strongly advise to work on a copy of the original document.

Document preparation | The Main Dialogue | What’s the magic? | InLine Headings Localization | Sources | Credits | Author | License

Preparing the document

In order to take advantage of the inlining facilities that InLineHeadings provide, you’ll have to prepare your document like this:

1. Create and write you document as usual, using the standard outline functionalities (for instance, apply the Heading N paragraph styles wherever necessary).

2. Format the to-be inlined outline levels as you’d like them to be when inlined: character settings, numbering, character separation with the text body (usually a dot), etc.

   InLine Heading will use this formatting as a template when processing the outline level.

   Note: The separation with the text body is always obtained using a space. Do not add this character to the heading paragraph.

Then run the extension and select the outline level to inline.

Updating the document after inlining some outline levels

After a given heading level has been inlined, its contents becomes invisible. It would be tedious, to say the least, to then try to update the headings.

The solution is to:

1. Undo the inlining, using the inline removal tool .

2. Apply the changes and modifications (text contents, formatting) to the wanted headings.

3. Run Inline Headings again .

The Main Dialogue

This dialogue helps setting the inlining definitions. The following settings are available:

What’s the magic?

Here are some details about the (de)inling processes.

Inlining

For each to-be inlined heading in the text:

1. InLine Headings creates a set of three styles per level to process:

   1. A special paragraph style for internal use. This style stores the current heading settings so that they may be restored in the future (in case of inlined headings removal). Naming convention: ilh_heading_N.

   2. Two special character styles for internal use:

      1. An inline style that is set from the corresponding heading character settings. Naming convention: ilh_heading_N.

      2. A special style to hide the marks that are inserted at start and end of the inlined text. Naming convention: ilh_mark_N.

   These styles are not meant to be used outside of InLine Headings. Thus they are set as hidden styles.

   Note that there’s no style creation if no paragraph heading exists for the wanted inlining.

2. Scans the document and, for each paragraph met that complies with the requirements:

   1. Sets the Heading N paragraph style so that it is hidden (white characters, very small size, no space before and after, attached with the next paragraph).

      The (now invisible) heading style remains Heading N, thus there’s no change to the Writer summary and crossref functionalities.

   2. Inserts the corresponding chapter fields at the next paragraph start and sets them with the appropriate character style (ilh_heading_N). Surrounding marks are also inserted so that a future fields suppression is easy. These marks are hidden using the ilh_mark_N character style.

      Note: Wherever a heading paragraph is not followed with a body paragraph, an empty one is added and the inline items are inserted there. This empty paragraph is not removed by the inline removal tool.

Un-inlining

The inline removal tool does the following:

1. Restores the initial Heading_N settings by copying them back from the ilh_heading_N paragraph style.

2. Removes the text that is enclosed between the start and end marks.

3. Removes the three special styles that were created at inlining time.

Localizing InLine Headings

InLine Headings is developed in English but the UI is designed to automatically adjust to the current LibreOffice environment localization. As of current version, only two UI locales are supported: English, as the default fall-back language, and French, my mother language.

Of course, language localization is made available through PO files (https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/PO-Files.html) (for the UI) and an HTML help file (for help). Thus adding other languages is easy.

The PO files are stored into the extension po subdir. HTML help files are stored in the extension help subdir. The localized files are automatically selected when they fit the current locale, otherwise English is the UI fallback language.

Creating a new PO file

1. Open the .pot template text file provided (en.pot).

2. Edit it using any text editor and fill the msgstr strings (do not touch to the msgids!).

3. Save as a xx.po file, where xx stand for the language 2-chars code (es : Spanish, de : German, etc.)

4. Copy it to the po subdir and that’s it. At the next start, the UI should be adjusted to your strings.

Do not forget to send the author the released PO file. You’ll be credited for that in this help page.

Creating a new Help file

1. Open the HTML help English version (ilh_help_en.html).

2. Translate it into your language of choice.

3. Name it accordingly : ilh_help_xx.html, where xx stand for the language 2-chars code (es : Spanish, it : Italian, etc.)

4. Place it in the help directory and that’s all about it. At next start, the help should be adjusted to your new language.

Do not forget to send the author the released HTML file. You’ll be credited for that in this help page for the next release.

Sources

• RGB user forum post, here:

  https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=709#p2870

• The APA style guidelines v.7:

  https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings

Credits

Author

InLine Heading is being developed by Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux (France)

jean-francois.nifenecker@laposte.net

It takes its inspiration and extends from RGB user forum post, as shown in the Sources chapter above.

Tests and suggestions

(none yet)

Icon

The InLine Heading icon is adapted from an artwork by Pixel perfect author, found in https://www.flaticon.com/. It is released under the CC0 license and is freely reusable.

Translations

(currently none)

History

License

InLine Heading is released under the GNU GPL v3 (and up) license.

More information here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html