Issue 9370 - Off-margin page background
Summary: Off-margin page background
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Writer
Classification: Application
Component: code (show other issues)
Version: 643
Hardware: All All
: P4 Trivial with 42 votes (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords: oooqa
: 44935 50340 51910 70508 99282 105181 105436 115976 128273 (view as issue list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 105217
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Reported: 2002-11-19 12:32 UTC by oblomov
Modified: 2020-01-26 15:22 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


Attachments
Page with full tiled background and a text area (12.52 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2005-09-10 13:25 UTC, grsingleton
no flags Details
template to illustrate how to do this with styles (12.07 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2005-09-10 13:27 UTC, grsingleton
no flags Details
Workaround for full-page background image with floating text (18.05 KB, application/vnd.sun.xml.writer)
2005-11-11 18:04 UTC, Matthias Basler
no flags Details

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Description oblomov 2002-11-19 12:32:41 UTC
As an introduction, I will copy the content of the mail I posted on the discuss 
an dev list:




I have the following problem in Writer:




* What I want to achieve:




putting a background image/graphic/drawing on all pages; this


image/graphic/drawing is larger than the text area (to be precise,


it's as big as the whole page); the background should be present


on all pages, mirrored in even (or odd) pages




* What I tried so far, and why it didn't work:




1. setting it up as page background


   doesn't work because (1) I cannot put SXD drawings there


   [solved exporting to EMF] (2) the background graphics is either


   scaled or cropped to fit within the text area and (3) I could


   not find a way to reflect it on even (or odd) pages




2. including it as an OLE object


   (let's not talk about this experience ... couldn't even force


   the correct size ...)




3. including it as a Draw object cutting and pasting from Draw


   doesn't work because (1) I cannot replicate it on every page


   without adding it manually each time (2) I cannot set it to


   mirror automatically on even (or odd) pages




4. including it as a Graphic


   doesn't work because (1) I cannot put SXD drawings there


   [solved exporting to EMF] (2) I cannot replicate it on every


   page without adding it manually each time.




So the question can be reduced to one of these alternatives:




(1) is there a way to set up an auto-mirroring, out-of-margin page


background?




or




(2) is there a way to set up an auto-replicating (page-anchored,


of course) object?




It is my understanding that neither of these can be currently


achieved, so I think that an enhancement request might be apt.




This feature is very important, and can be reduced to the following request: 
page background (whether colour or image, is not important) should have margins 
independent from the text area. The concept should be generalized to the concept 
of "page watermark", with the following options:




(1) possibility to choose a background colour *and* a background picture


(2) possibility to set the shading of the colour and picture to anything between 
0% and 100%


(3) margins independent from the text area


(4) option to automatically reflect the watermark on odd/even pages.




An important example of application is the creation of a pleading template (for 
the USA) or an Italian "carta uso bollo", very important for legal applications.


(This is a necessary condition to have users in the legal field switch from Word 
or WordPerfect, which is why I set the priority to 4.)
Comment 1 Unknown 2003-02-11 09:02:37 UTC
I had nearly the same problem, but in the header, when importing from 
Word. The Document had a Off-margin-Bitmap anchored in the header.

So I think, that the concept should include, that headers should also 
have margins independent from the text area.

NEARBY: a workaround for the watermark, but not really perfect, is, 
to set page margins wider, and then set smaller margins in all 
paragraph layouts.
Comment 2 stefan.baltzer 2003-06-04 14:26:47 UTC
Reassigned to Bettina.
Comment 3 skeeve 2003-06-06 11:57:19 UTC
@bettina please take also
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=13606 into account ;-)
Comment 4 Matthias Basler 2005-03-19 20:07:01 UTC
*** Issue 9370 has been confirmed by votes. ***
Comment 5 Matthias Basler 2005-03-19 20:13:40 UTC
I strongly support this:
Trying to format a brochure I need to have a small image (a logo) on a specific
place on every outer page border on every page. (Actually it's a graphics
object, but I could convert it to an image, if necessary.)
... Inserting it manually on every page would be a very bad idea for longer docs.

See issue 44935 also, which covers a similar, although not equal, problem.
Comment 6 grsingleton 2005-09-10 13:23:44 UTC
I think that this can all be done as styles as shown in the attached examples.
Comment 7 grsingleton 2005-09-10 13:25:28 UTC
Created attachment 29451 [details]
Page with full tiled background and a text area
Comment 8 grsingleton 2005-09-10 13:27:01 UTC
Created attachment 29453 [details]
template to illustrate how to do this with styles
Comment 9 Matthias Basler 2005-09-10 21:29:20 UTC
Hi grsingleton 

Nice idea, but this is just a workaround for a one or two page document. Using a
text frame for the continuous text is not a good idea. Just try following two
things with your document to see the problem:
- Fill the inner text frame until the page is full. Add more text. You frame
does expand. But the user expects is, that (as usual) a new page starts.
- Try to insert a manual page break. Guess you cannot - it's disabled.

So, for continuous text over multiple pages you solution doesn't work. Sorry.
Maybe you find a better one...
Comment 10 Matthias Basler 2005-11-11 17:39:02 UTC
I believe I found another near-workaround, but it would work after a very minor
change to the code (I believe so, I don't know!):

Add a header or footer to the page (or the page template). Insert the image into
the header or the footer. Edit the image properties. Now you can adjust the
alignment to be, f.e. "left" and "top" relative to the "full page". What's left
to do is to set the image size. For the width this will usually work fine, you
just have to set the image width to the ration of (page width/text are width),
maybe 130% or so.
The problem is the height. Headers or footers are usually 1-2 cm height, so one
would need to scale the image size to maybe 1500% (of the header height). This
is currently not supported since the variable used to store the image size in
percent is only a "byte" variable (i.e. it can be max. 254%). If this could be
changed to be "ushort" data type (0-65536) or something like this, one could
scale the image to fill the whole page. Shouldn't be that big a problem, should it?
Comment 11 Matthias Basler 2005-11-11 18:02:24 UTC
Update: Above solution really works, of one uses absolute measures (i.e.
21cmx29.7 cm), not relative measures (120%x1500%). I'll attach a sample document.

Note1: With the image in the background it is hard to edit the text. The cursor
will always highlight the image instead of the foreground text. So better add
the image at the end of the editing process.

Note2: This seems to work only with OOo2.0, in OOo1.1.5 it seems not to be
possibe to have images larger than the header/footer height in the header resp.
footer. (As expected exporting the backgound image to ".sxw" from OOo2.0 doesn't
work either.)

Note3: I don't think this workaround obsoletes a "real" solution of the issue,
where the document stays easily editable even with the image in the background.
Comment 12 Matthias Basler 2005-11-11 18:04:41 UTC
Created attachment 31382 [details]
Workaround for full-page background image with floating text
Comment 13 cno 2006-04-11 20:53:06 UTC
I've made an example with a frame in the header, that has the picture as background.
http://www.nouenoff.nl/downloads/background_image.pdf
Is less dificult to work with. Still not ideal.
Comment 14 cno 2006-04-11 20:55:56 UTC
IMO #9370, #44935, and #50340, are the same.
Comment 15 eric.savary 2006-10-17 14:56:16 UTC
*** Issue 70508 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 16 goldfisch1980 2006-10-20 00:21:13 UTC
I think this is NOT a P4 issue, because it's a major feature that is not
supported in OO since launching the project!

We think about going back to MS Office in case of missing such a rudimentary
feature! We can not create any letters in an easy way which are using our
corporate design! For our bussiness the writer is very useless at the moment :-(
Comment 17 baaann 2006-10-20 15:30:03 UTC
I voted for this issue because it is not at all obvious how to accomplish a
corporate design template.

But if you use styles, set your page style margins to zero and adjust your
paragraph style indents to achieve the desired margin. You should find that will
work.

Once you have created the appropriate styles save as a template.
Comment 18 Regina Henschel 2006-10-20 21:47:30 UTC
Addition to the workaround: If you set a border to the page (in the color of the
paper), you can determine the "Spacing to contents", which will act as page
margins. So you need not to change any paragraph style.
Comment 19 ferque6 2006-11-02 08:09:58 UTC
Hi

There are some ways to put the backgrounds. But it would be easier to be able 
to define the margins of a background (colour or image) different from the text 
margins.

Nice feature for next release.
 
Comment 20 lohmaier 2007-06-25 12:12:22 UTC
*** Issue 51910 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 21 bettina.haberer 2007-09-26 16:01:26 UTC
Hi Mathias, I have changed the current owner to your owner. Please take the
ownership of these enhancements.
Comment 22 charlax 2007-10-08 13:12:21 UTC
Why not making the format->page dialog only relative to the page (i.e. the size of the page, its 
background, its border for the whole page, the presence or not of a header/footer, the global printer 
margins...) ?

And then make the text zone the main frame, the header also a frame, the footer also a frame... For each 
frame, it will be possible to set the border, the background... These frames would be editable as frame 
styles.

I think it would be the most logic thing! Because for the moment we have in the same dialog options only 
related to the page (its size) and some other only related to the main text area (i.e. its margin, columns, 
background and border). Yet a page is a page, and a frame is frame!
Comment 23 mbayer 2008-02-14 16:00:47 UTC
*** Issue 50340 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 24 mbayer 2008-02-14 16:03:00 UTC
*** Issue 44935 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 25 mbayer 2008-02-14 16:13:05 UTC
mbayer->mba: We need an option in Format -> Page -> Background to make the
position of a background graphic relative to Page text area *or* Entire page, in
order to get rid of this old RFE. IMHO the dialogue could be designed
analogously to Picture -> Type -> Position. Am I wrong assuming that, given all
the workarounds, limitations of the file format do not seem to be a concern here?
Comment 26 eric.savary 2009-02-17 01:31:02 UTC
*** Issue 99282 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 27 cno 2009-02-17 08:00:30 UTC
Just a note: while waiting for this enhancement:
The situation has significantly improved since OOo 3.0, in which graphics and
shapes placed in the background, will not directly be selected by clicking in
the area.
Comment 28 fbachofner 2009-04-01 00:36:00 UTC
Given that there are literally many dozens of people asking for a resolution to
this problem both in this issue# and the 7 (seven!) marked as duplicate in this
thread alone, can this PLEASE be moved to at least P3 priority?

This is yet another issue that makes it difficult for us to convince small
business owners to adopt OOo.  Many such individuals need multiple letterheads
and don't want the expense of preprinting them -- a page (not text area)
background graphic would be perfect for the task . . .

So long as OOo doesn't offer this (Word does) it becomes a difficult workaround
which might require (expensive?) consultant help for many.  Meanwhile, such
individuals can do it with a couple clicks in Word.  The type of "complex"
workaround described here makes Word seem inexpensive to the uninitiated.

Thanks for your consideration.
Comment 29 cno 2009-04-01 07:00:20 UTC
Hi fbachofner,
Thanks for your explanation. Alas there are quite some must-have-important issues.
Can you pls. tell us how much the change, as I described in
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9370#desc28 , does make a
difference?
Cor
Comment 30 fbachofner 2009-04-01 17:06:51 UTC
Hi cornouws:

Are you referring to your post of Tue Feb 17 08:00:30 +0000 2009 ?

"The situation has significantly improved since OOo 3.0, in which graphics and
shapes placed in the background, will not directly be selected by clicking in
the area."

That functionality is NOT evident to us.  We are running OOo 3.0.1 [OOO300m315]
 on a wide variety of our own and clients' computers.  Clicking a page with a
background graphic which is set to full page size ALWAYS results in selecting
the graphic and the text becomes "not editable" . . .

That is our experience on Windows XP SP3 and a few Vista (and Windows 7 beta)
machines.

I will try it on a OpenSuse 11.1 Linux box and see whether the problem is
somehow platform specific.

Thanks for your quick reply to my earlier post.
Comment 31 melatwork 2009-06-03 10:55:22 UTC
This issue is make or break for our organisation moving onto OO; if we can't
bring our existing full page width letter head into Writer and make using the
template easy, we can't migrate...

Comment 32 eric.savary 2009-09-18 16:22:29 UTC
*** Issue 105181 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 33 eric.savary 2009-09-28 21:54:48 UTC
*** Issue 105436 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 34 eric.savary 2010-12-07 22:10:39 UTC
*** Issue 115976 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 35 mr_smyle 2010-12-08 01:26:52 UTC
Hi!
Can this be solved for 3.4?
Comment 36 Marcus 2017-05-20 11:29:29 UTC
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".
Comment 37 Marcus 2020-01-26 15:22:49 UTC
*** Issue 128273 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***