Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 58210
Page Breaks visual aid checkbox set, but page breaks not initially visible
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:12:27 UTC
When I open a multipage spreadsheet, even if I have the "page breaks" visual aid option selected for Calc, I do not see the page break lines. I must perform an action, like switching to page break preview and then back to normal view, to see the page break indicators.
I'm not sure that this is really a bug. In fact, MS Excel has exactly the same behavior. Even though the page break visual aids are enabled by default, they don't show up until the user does something related to printing. Usually, people do not care about viewing page breaks until they are going to print the document. I, for one, find them annoying until I actually want to print, because they distract me. I believe that neither OOo Calc nor Excel actually calculate the page breaks until the user requests it, but maybe I'm wrong. I do think, however, that it's a little counter-intuitive to have an option that says "visual aids > show page breaks" turned on without anything initially showing up. Perhaps there should be something in the documentation about this? I'll have to let a developer comment further. *Changed sub-component to ui -Steve
Ok, I did a bit more research. Here's how MS Excel handles it: E1) Initially, in Excel, you can open the "Tools" > "Options" > View tab and under "Window Options", the "Page Breaks" checkbox will not be set. (This makes sense, since page breaks aren't visible.) E2) In Excel, close the options box E3) Select Print Preview any way you feel like E4) Cancel print preview. At this point, page break visual aids are visible. E5) Open "Tools" > "Options" > View tab. Now, under "Window Options", the "Page Breaks" checkbox will be set. (This makes sense, since page breaks are now visible.) Here's what the bug is in OOo 2.0: The "Page Breaks" visual aid checkbox is set when a document is initially loaded, even though the page break visual aids are disabled. How to reproduce: 1) Open OOo 2.0 2) Open a new spreadsheet document. 3) On "Tools" menu, select "Options" 4) Navigate to "OpenOffice.org Calc" > "View" 5) Note that under "Visual Aids", "Page Breaks" is checked. 6) Close the Options dialog by clicking "Ok" or "Cancel" (either) 7) Notice that no page breaks are showing The "Page Breaks" checkbox should match the behavior of the current document, but it doesn't. What should happen: -On startup, page break visual aids should be invisible and the "Page Breaks" checkbox should be unchecked -After a print preview or whatever, page break visual aids should become visible, and the "Page Breaks" checkbox should change to checked -In the event that someone changes the "Page Breaks" checkbox in the "Options dialog," the visibility of the page break visual aids should change accordingly. *Confirmed, Windows XP SP2, OOo 2.0 *Changing priority to P4, seeing as the behavior is already like that of Excel, it's only the checkbox that isn't behaving correctly.
One further comment: In the event that multiple spreadsheets are open, the "Page Breaks" checkbox should match the visibility of page breaks in the document that the "Options" dialog was launched from. (In other words, if I have two spreadsheets open, and a print preview in only one, then the page break visual aids should show up only in that one, not both.) This seems to work properly now, but whoever works on this bug should ensure that after the fix this still works properly. -Steve
OK, that's fine, but who says OO has to match EXCEL? It makes no sense for a (global) options dialog to show what properly belongs in a document properties dialog. Also, if I open the doc, and then right away I check the checkbox, the page breaks would be expected to show right away.
OOo doesn't have to match Excel, necessarily. I'm just pointing out that in this particular case, it appears that the OOo developers were trying to emulate Excel behavior. But Calc isn't emulating that behavior correctly, so I think the real bug fix is to get the behavior to be consistent with what Excel does. If you think that the page break visual aids should be under document properties instead of in the global dialogs (which seems perfectly plausible to me), then submit a feature or enhancement request for that. I think we narrowed down what the bug is here; where the checkbox occurs is a seperate issue. Also, you are right: If you open a new document and go check the checkbox, the page break visual aids should show up. (But I already said that: "In the event that someone changes the "Page Breaks" checkbox in the "Options dialog," the visibility of the page break visual aids should change accordingly.") -Steve
hi, not a defect as this behaviour is intentional. Loading a document does not necessarily set margins according to the used printer. Using Pagebreak Preview or Page Preview will do so. So the behaviour IMHO is correct. nevertheless, let's requirements decide. Frank