Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 49960
Hidden sections also counted in outline numbering
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:38:53 UTC
I am writing technical documentation for a professional product with both a pro and lite version. The differences are put into sections that are shown/hidden depending on the document version (conditional text). This works really great. The problem I have now is that the outline numbering is skipping the hidden sections instead of continuing. The resulting outline numbering does not really look professional. Example with a hidden section (2. Heading B): 1. Heading A some text 3. Heading C another text Heading C must be numbered "2. " when the section with Heading B is in a hidden section.
This currently works as designed. This is a kind of "industry standard" - all big Word processing applications work this way. Thus - to keep compatibility - it works the described way in OO Writer. But someone could desire the other way, so it could be reasonnable to have an (compatibility-) option for this.
*** Issue 14211 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
> all big Word processing applications work this way No, LaTeX works like expected. It took me a while to switch from OOo but the outline numbering in LaTeX makes sense even with a lot of conditional text. What advantage has the "industry standard" you are talking about?
- The same issue exists for other enumerations as well - I support the opinion that no matter if other word processing apps behave the same, hidden paragraphs really should not get any outline/ enumeration numbering Also, I would consider this a bug rather than an RFE, but, as always, this is open to discussion...
I agree this is a significant problem. In my master documents, I need to be able to hide some sections (subdocuments) and show others based on the target audience. Ideally, I should be able to manage all the subdocuments with one master document, conditionally controlled by a single user variable to select the target audience. The user variable part works beautifully already for conditionally hiding and showing text, paragraphs, and sections at the master level... perfect for alternate spellings or selecting which screenshots and instructions a user will see. The only flaw in this otherwise highly flexible "single source" design is outline numbering. Because outline numbering is applied to all headings of a given level, hidden or not, I must create a separate master document for each "flavor" of output simply to get the right chapters showing in the TOC. This means maintaining several masters if a sub document filename changes or needs to be added, as the documented product changes and grows. Please put a target milestone on this! It's an important feature for global documentation or for corporations that have several levels of users for a given product.
(My apologies for the double post! I had a browser glitch. Can the duplicate be removed?)