Commenter "n8ur" on issue 4914 mentioned that this feature should have the following characteristics, which would combine features from both the Normal view and the Web View:

*  It optimizes use of the screen space for drafting.
*  It allows smooth vertical scrolling without page jumps
*  It preserves sentence and paragraph formatting
*  It preserves pagination
*  It allows you to view text outside the margins if desired

Yes please. Give us this mode. In MS Word, you have Normal mode, Print Layout Mode, and Web Mode. What Dotan is calling "Normal" mode in his comment is analogous to Print Layout Mode in MS Word. Web Mode in OO is more or less the same as Web Mode in MS Word. 

What is lacking in OO is something analogous to MS Word's Normal mode (i.e., what Dotan calls "Content" mode). 

It blows my mind that this software is in version 4 and it still lacks this most basic of features. But at this point it's not a surprise. I don't expect that it will ever be addressed, but hope springs eternal.

(In reply to Dotan Cohen from comment #1)
> Commenter "n8ur" on issue 4914 mentioned that this feature should have the
> following characteristics, which would combine features from both the Normal
> view and the Web View:
> 
> *  It optimizes use of the screen space for drafting.
> *  It allows smooth vertical scrolling without page jumps
> *  It preserves sentence and paragraph formatting
> *  It preserves pagination
> *  It allows you to view text outside the margins if desired

A good description is also at https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer_Views#Draft_Layout
and that passage should now be linked to this issue as well.

While it is difficult to wade through all of issue 4914, some of the discussions of how "Normal" view is used by those who find it indispensable is worth reviewing.

I don't mean this in a snarky way at all, but has anyone on the team worked with a non-trivial document (say, a business report, or a contract) in MS Word normal view?  That may be the best way to demonstrate what we're asking for, as the Word normal view is just "right."  It shows you everything needed to work on the document's content without unnecessary white space.  (You deal with headers, footers, etc. at the beginning or end of the process, using page/print view.  But they are just in the way when you're working on the body.)
 
I will also add another reason why this feature is valuable.  I have quite bad eyesignt and want the text I'm working on to be as large as possible.  All the white space in the current OO layout forces the display font to be smaller, making it harder for me to distinguish commas from periods, etc.  A view that puts a line of text across the whole window is much easier for me to work with.

I understand how many feature requests there are, and how limited the team's resources are, but to a significant part of your user community, this is really important.

Thanks!

Add a link to the draft view in the wiki document in the URL field as suggested by Dennis.

(In reply to n8ur from comment #4)
The comment from n8ur is very helpful.

Let's be clear about this issue, in contrast with how issue 4914 wandered everywhere.

The issue is to devise a form of editable viewing that corresponds with what is called various things in other editors and especially "Normal" mode in Microsoft Office Word.

Additions here should already assume that (1) the feature is valuable and (2) we have a pretty good idea how it should work for users.

Knowing more use cases is fine.

What's valuable here is sharpening the requirement.  It is important to not hijack it to be some other solution or to require an use case beyond the basic scope.  If you want to vote on this issue, do so.  If you want something else, make a different issue.

This still does not mean there are developers with the necessary skills making themselves available to work on this.  When that happens, there is a different level of detail work that will probably be documented elsewhere.

(In reply to Keith N. McKenna from comment #5)
> Add a link to the draft view in the wiki document in the URL field as
> suggested by Dennis.
I had meant linking back to here from that URL, and I have done that.  
Thanks for linking the other way in the URL field of the issue.

I notice that the Draft Layout (I would call it Draft Text mode) on the wiki page says "NO formatting."

That needs to be clarified.  lists/paragraphing/numbering and separations (i.e., breaks as represented by horizontal rules) are obviously preserved enough as are layout features that don't change straightforward flow of the textual material.  Font and emphasis (italic, bolding, underlining, etc) and sub-/super-scripts and that sort of thing matters for many writers.  Of course, the author gets to decide how much of this they want to use and when they want to work on getting breaks where they want, controlling paragraph rules, etc.

Using a multi-page, mostly two-column report of mine, I opened it in Microsoft Office Word 2013 and changed the view to Draft mode (what it is called now, something I had not noticed).  That preserves the formatting at the paragraph level and shows where breaks are.  Some of the framed figures don't show though.  I can see what footnote text is when I mouse over the footnote symbol where the footnote is referenced, but I'm not sure how to edit it.  

So is this too much formatting or is it no problem because it is elective to use it?

(I opened the same document in Windows WordPad and the result was completely unusable.)

Created attachment 84509 [details]
Sample of Draft view in Word 2013

Here is a sample of Draft view in the current version of Microsoft Office Word.

There is one limitation.  The text flow is still in accord with the margins and paragraph settings.  So, with this zoomed window, if I had not manually broken the paragraph lines where I did, there would need to be horizontal scrolling to see the full width of the lines under the ruler.  I could have changed the margins instead, as a temporary measure.

I see that for some, avoiding horizontal scrolling is very important.  Would we always want reflow to shrink to the available window width (for horizontal writing styles at least) when the window is less than what the ruler allows?  Should it be an option on the Draft view?

This feature request, although kicked around a bit, has not received any development traction.

The problem is not on the merits of the feature request.  Now the only issue is the capacity of the project and the prioritizing of that capacity.  

In that respect, this issue has the same prospects as Outline View, Reveal Codes, and the "Normal View" request that this one was marked as depending on.

I am Resolving the issue as Won't Fix.  At this time (2016-02-03) there is no prospect of anything being done that provides the desired functionality in the product.

This issue record will remain and the discussion might be useful for anyone who entertains implementing such functionality (in any ODF-oriented product) in the future.  Comments can continue to be made.  Interested parties should be clear that there is no likelihood of this change to the AOO software, however.