Indentation craziness

Question

I'm writing a document with a tiered structure of headings, and I'm finding Pages' behaviour on tiered lists quite frustrating.
I've set up paragraph styles called Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 and set them to use tiered list numbering. The first problem is that Pages doesn't seem to make the indentation level part of the style, so when I type a heading and choose Heading 3, its indentation level is set to level 1, and I have to increase it manually.
That, together with this second problem, is the root of my frustration:
If the paragraph below the one you're indenting has a higher indentation level, it gets indented as well. Consider the following list:
1. Fruits
1.1 Apples
1.2 Oranges
If I add "Pears" and make it Heading 2, its indentation gets reset to level 1:
1. Fruits
1.1 Apples
2. Pears
2.1 Oranges
Now, if I want to fix this by indenting Pears, Oranges gets indented as well:
1. Fruits
1.1 Apples
1.2 Pears
1.2.1 Oranges
Because I use indentation levels for the paragraphs of actual text between the headings as well (Pages requires this to behave properly, and it's not a bad thing), every time I add a heading it messes up the structure of my document.
Simply outdenting the "Oranges" heading won't do as a remedy, because this won't outdent the paragraphs of text below it (as I said, it only affects following paragraphs if they have a higher indentation level).
This behaviour may be useful if you're editing a list that's in one place (e.g., a bullet list in a slide presentation), but it's not appropriate when using tiered numbers for headings in a document.
Does anyone else find this behaviour strange, and does anyone know of a way around it?
I think if the first problem (not remembering indentation levels in a paragraph style) was fixed, it might solve this whole issue.
Amar
PowerMac G4 Dual 867 MHz   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB

Answer 1

Hullo Amar Sagoo:
I think your particular problem with lists may belong to what you are doing with them, which other users (myself included) may not have encountered themselves.
However, whilst it would seem fairly straightforward to create a list in the first place, ammending it can certainly upset that.
The place to look for list management, however, is not always in the general styles drawer. You will need, first, to select the paragraph (or list item, I suppose you'd call it here) and then turn to the inspector > text > list to adjust details, including numbering and indent levels.
You can, for example, alter the indent level of any particular item from there.
Notwithstanding, if your issue is rather with the whole list, in the ammended form you want for it, I'd think you might need to select your whole list first, and then use this panel to choose the list properties - indentation & numbering; what have you. To select the whole of any isolated material in Pages, you first insert your cursor at either the beginning or the end of it, and click, and then transfer to the end or beginning (respectively) and shift-click there to highlight the whole. With that, you can order the list overall.
There are quite a number of help topics on this subject, but none of them especially evident from Pages' main help page. I suggest you type "formatting ordered lists" (without the quotes) in the search panel of Pages help, which will show you a wealth of information amongst which I'd be reasonably confident you'd be able to identify and solve your particular issue.
On the other hand, there does remain a limitation in Pages' "list" capabilites; inasmuch as that they still fall short of an outliner, even though the help refers to an ordered list, in brackets, as an outline. It isn't quite, since you can't collapse and re-open it - and the nomenclature is confusing in failing to make this distinction. But as lists they would seem to be workable.
If, once having explored what really is available, you are still dissatisfied with it, you may be in a position to offer some constructive suggestion to Pages > Provide Pages Feedback in the main menu of your program.
Meantime best wishes, and see if this helps.
iBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)