Is there any way to change the spacing between list items?

[Rekrul]

I know you can change the line spacing of a list the same as a paragraph, but is there any way to change the spacing between the items in a list, while leaving the spacing of multi-line list items the same? I would like multi-line list items to have their lines single spaced, but for there to be slightly more space between each item.

For example, making a list gives me this;


Is there any way I can change that to look like this;



If there isn't a setting that can do this, is there some trick that I can use?

[StewCam]

A bit of a kludge, but you could add a soft return (Shift-Enter) after each list item.

[Rekrul]

A bit of a kludge,

I'm OK with using kludges as long as they don't break anything.

but you could add a soft return (Shift-Enter) after each list item.

Thank you.

Just Shift-Enter by itself adds a full line, but if I select it and change the font size, I can adjust the spacing to my heart's content. I just have to change the bullet size afterwards, since they shrink as well.

[Robert]

First note that your text might not contain a proper bulleted list. It looks like its paragraphs might have “keep with next paragraph” properties.
Now in Atlantis, like in any other word processor, it is preferable to format list items as belonging to a common automatic list. Here is how to proceed for a bulleted list:
1. Select the target paragraphs.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+B.
3. Leave the selection AS IS, then press Ctrl+Shift+G, and adjust the Spacing Before and After values as suitable. Alternatively, press Ctrl+0 to add Spacing Before Paragraph to the selected paragraphs.

Please have a look at the attached document. It contains 3 lists, each with specific Spacing Before Paragraph values.
HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[Rekrul]

First note that your text might not contain a proper bulleted list. It looks like its paragraphs might have “keep with next paragraph” properties.

Atlantis seems to think it's a normal list as far as I can see. When I select it and open the paragraph settings, the keep with next paragraph option isn't checked.

Now in Atlantis, like in any other word processor, it is preferable to format list items as belonging to a common automatic list. Here is how to proceed for a bulleted list:
1. Select the target paragraphs.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+B.
3. Leave the selection AS IS, then press Ctrl+Shift+G, and adjust the Spacing Before and After values as suitable. Alternatively, press Ctrl+0 to add Spacing Before Paragraph to the selected paragraphs.

Please have a look at the attached document. It contains 3 lists, each with specific Spacing Before Paragraph values.

That works perfectly for your document, and for any lists that I create myself from scratch in a new document, however it only works about 50% of the time with the lists in the existing document that I'm trying to edit. I had actually tried changing those settings before, but I must have picked one of the lists it wouldn't work on because it didn't seem to change anything.

In fact, trying to recreate the uncooperative lists from scratch is a royal PITA! If I start a new list in a new document and then copy the text from each entry of the existing list and paste it into the new one, it brings its uncooperative nature with with it and the new list behaves exactly the same as the old list. If I convert the list to a manual list, it appears to convert it to plain text, but pasting it into a new list doesn't work right. If I copy all the lines, and paste it in, it pastes all the text above the new list. In fact it does this any time I include the linefeed in the copy. I have to copy just the text for the first item, paste it in, hit Enter, copy the text for the second item, paste it in, hit Enter, etc. The only way to get it to paste properly into the list is to copy the text, paste it into Notepad, then copy it from Notepad and paste it back into Atlantis. THEN it properly creates each entry and I can change the spacing.

I don't know if there's something I'm missing or if it's just not properly importing the document.

Can you please look at the attached document? It contains a list from the document I'm trying to edit. Changing the before and after spacing for the list/paragraph changes the space before and after the list, but the spacing of the entries remains the same. Is there something else I need to change to get the spacing to work, or is the document just bugged?

[Robert]

To determine if Atlantis sees any paragraph as an item in an automatic list, display the Lists panel of the Control Board (F6).
Let’s take “List.doc” as an example. If you double-click on “List1” in the Lists panel, you get this:



Note that the list was formatted as an “outline” list but items a) to f) do not actually make up any outline list. They are simple items in a numbered list.
Now let’s suppose that you want to increase the spacing between these a) to f) list items. Keep them selected, and press Ctrl+Shift+G. You should get this:



As you can see, “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” is checked. Uncheck it, and OK out of the dialog to validate your changes. You should get this:



The lists in your document actually would need complete overhaul. But this cannot be done without seeing the whole document.

[Rekrul]

Note that the list was formatted as an “outline” list but items a) to f) do not actually make up any outline list. They are simple items in a numbered list.

I have no clue what the difference is. Atlantis is the most advanced word processor I've ever used. This is the first time in my life that I have ever used a list function. As far as I know, none of the programs I used in the past had such an option. I think the most advanced feature any of them had was allowing you to draw lines and boxes on the page. They didn't have individual paragraph styles, sections, etc. Or if they did, I never even knew those things existed.

I mainly typed up personal letters for myself or family members. Occasionally one of them might ask me to make something with a grid display (calendar, time sheet, etc), but I always laid it out manually.

Since installing Atlantis, I've been struggling to figure out how all these features work. The automatic list numbering when you press Enter and it adds the next number/letter drove me crazy until I figured out what it was doing.

As you can see, “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” is checked. Uncheck it, and OK out of the dialog to validate your changes. You should get this:

Thank you, that works.

The lists in your document actually would need complete overhaul. But this cannot be done without seeing the whole document.

Even with my limited experience, I could see that the original document was a train wreck. Difference sections have different indenting, some lists are lists while others are just typed as text, different lists have different spacing, the page numbers were typed into the text itslef and the whole thing was broken up into 23 files.

[Robert]

Difference sections have different indenting, some lists are lists while others are just typed as text, different lists have different spacing, the page numbers were typed into the text itslef and the whole thing was broken up into 23 files.

This is a major train wreck indeed!

Outline lists are multi-level lists with a hierarchical tree structure. For details, please have a look at Outline_(list)
Ordinary bulleted or numbered lists are single-level linear lists.

[Robert]

The attached document illustrates how documents should be formatted. The Normal style is not used except as a virtual base style for all other styles. All the paragraphs are associated with a dedicated style. Ordinary paragraphs are associated with the Body Text style. Bulleted or numbered paragraphs are associated with dedicated styles, one for each level of a single outline list. Please have a look. Of course, the contents of this document reproduce the contents of the corresponding Web page at Board of Directors Job Description.
HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[Rekrul]

The attached document illustrates how documents should be formatted. The Normal style is not used except as a virtual base style for all other styles. All the paragraphs are associated with a dedicated style. Ordinary paragraphs are associated with the Body Text style. Bulleted or numbered paragraphs are associated with dedicated styles, one for each level of a single outline list. Please have a look. Of course, the contents of this document reproduce the contents of the corresponding Web page at Board of Directors Job Description.

Thanks. I pretty much gave up on trying to reformat everything to look nicer. I'm sure it would be easy for someone with experience, but for me it was a nightmare. Every time I changed one thing to make the lists look nicer, it screwed up the spacing for the text above and below them. Then I would have to adjust that paragraph's spacing to fix it and then there there would be too much space between it and the next, so I would have to adjust THAT paragraph's spacing and so on.

Plus, no matter what I did it was impossible to get the page breaks to look right. At least not without having large amounts of empty space on the pages. There were many instances where just the last few words of a paragraph would end up on the following page, which looks like crap. However the only way to fix it is to bunch something together to free up a line, or mess with the spacing on the page to get everything just a little closer. Then of course you have to do that for every following page because none of them are formatted nicely either.

Even the index looks messy with overlapping page numbers for the different sections. In other words;

Section A 1-3
Section B 3-7

Etc.

If I use page breaks to put each section on a new page, then I end up with pages that barely have anything on them.

Being an editor isn't for me. I was asked to clean up this document and make it look nice, but I can't see any way to do that without making major changes to it. I split one or two sections where it was just a case of moving a single line to the next page, but that's about it. It will have to be good enough.

[Robert]

If there aren’t any privacy concerns, you could send your document to support@AtlantisWordProcessor.com. If it’s not too long, we could edit/proofread it for you. And provide a few explanations.

[Rekrul]

If there aren’t any privacy concerns, you could send your document to support@AtlantisWordProcessor.com. If it’s not too long, we could edit/proofread it for you. And provide a few explanations.

Thanks. I already sent it to the woman who requested that I edit it and she says she's happy with what I did. She says she'll format the pages.

I know what I would have done with it, but since this was for someone else, I wasn't 100% confident in reformatting it too much. Plus, I'm using Atlantis and she's using Word 2003 (she likes that version) and I figured the more tricks I used, the more the chance that something might break on her end.

[Robert]

Documents created/edited/saved in Atlantis are compatible with all MS Word versions.