Help me understand Lists, Position

I cannot working out what the Position settings are really doing in my document. The preview that I get in the setting windows doesn’t match the document output, and I am at a loss understanding why.

Aligned at > Setting Preview - The preview suggests that the Bullet Point itself will be aligned to this number.

Aligned at > Document - The Bullet Point never leaves the Page Margin edge, no indent is formed. Further additional levels of Bullet Points are all rendered on the left side of the page margin regardless of this setting.

Aligned at > Personal Conjecture - Doesn’t apply any styling to the actual text.

Numbering Alignment > Setting Preview - Provides no difference in layout.

Numbering Alignment > Document - Places the Bullet Point Left of, Center to, or Right of the mark point.

Numbering followed by > Personal Conjecture - Seems to work as I understand it.

Tab stop at > Setting Preview - The position of the first line of the entry will start here.

Tab stop at > Document - The position of the first line of the entry will start here.

Tab stop at > Personal Conjecture - Seems to work fine, but…

Indent at > Setting Preview - Secondary and further lines will align to this number.

Indent at > Document - Setting ignored.

Indent at > Personal Conjecture - This setting is fully ignored by the document.

Document Settings

Indents & Spacing
Indents Before text 0 cm; After text 0 cm; First line o cm; Automatic Not ticked.

Spacing Above paragraph 0.25 cm; Below paragraph 0.25 cm; Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style Not ticked.

Line Spacing Single.

List 1 - Level 1 Aligned at 1 cm; Number alignment Left; Numbering followed by Tab stop; Tab stop at 1.50 cm; Indent at 1.50 cm.

List 1 - Level 2 Aligned at 2 cm; Number alignment Left; Numbering followed by Tab stop; Tab stop at 2.50 cm; Indent at 2.50 cm.

Aligned at says where the number goes, but as numbers have some width you also need to indicate the Numbering alignment: this last parameter indicates how numbers (and its separators) must be positioned: Left (default option) indicates that the number starts on the indicated position (i.e., the position goes to the left of the number), Right that the number ends on that position (i.e., the numbers goes before the marker) while centred is, well, centred :slight_smile:

Number followed by indicates how the numbering must be separated from the text, while Indent at indicate the left indent of the whole paragraph (minus the first line, which is controlled by Number followed by).

EDIT: better wording, I hope :wink:

So I am understanding what they do it seems, is there a reason why they are being ignored inside the document?

Difficult to say without looking at the actual document. Could you please upload a sample file? Make clear what you want to obtain and what are you obtaining.

Not sure if this was the error or not, but I was directly formatting List # to make the changes, when I started a new document, only only used the Numbers and Bullets editor from a different style, that allowed the bullets to change, and bullet formats to be applicable.

The only issue is that the indents push the ruler by whatever its indented at. A 1 cm indent, makes for example a 15 cm tab, become 14 cm tab instead.

Problem Solved by not directly formating List 1 style.

For the record, I wrote a more detailed article on my personal blog about alignment on numbered lists:

Numbered and bulleted lists alignment on LibreOffice Writer