Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 82318
Suggest: add a mask feature to writer
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:37:38 UTC
It would be useful to add a mask feature related to format of page. But I understand that it would requires a lot of work! Such a feature would be nearly the same as the one implemented in Impress. And why not, it could be shared between Writer and Draw... It would require to move the Header and footer feature to "View", and then add in this View menu "Mask". It would be a good thing to find a way to link it with the page format.
What do you mean exactly with "Mask feature"? What is it good for? How can it improve Writer?
In fact, I would like to create a newsletter with a wallpaper, but it seems it is impossible to put a wallpaper for the whole page. It only applies to the text zone (i.e. excluding the margins). That's why I thought of a mask, in order to be able to put this wallpaper. And then I tried to think of ways to improve this idea. It makes use of page mask, you can create such page (for instance for a newsletter, there is a page with two columns, one with three) and then use the placeholder (like in Impress in fact, yet you can't use specific placeholder in Impress) to put some graphics, some text (for instance the table of contents).
Yes, I see. Page Background graphics in Writer cannot fill the whole page - only the text area. this is currently handled in issue 16181 and 9370. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 16181 ***
closing duplicate.
Yes, I find this issue relevant and I have voted for it. But wouldn't it be interesting to implement this mask feature and make it unified for OOo Draw, Spreadsheet and Impress ? The placeholder idea is for me interesting. It could simplify somehow the generation of a newsletter for example. And it would be a great innovative feature for OOo! Using the masks would be useful for advanced formatting. For example, when creating a newsletter, you could use the first page mask, replace the placeholders "title", "image", "table of contents" with whatever you want, then add a "two-columns+frame" page, then replace the placeholders...
Well, problem is that Writer is a Word Processor - not a DTP application. So this Mask feature cannot just be unified with Impress' ones...
Yes, I understand your point. But in the mean time, don't you think that such a feature could be applied to a word processor, and significantly enhance the capatibilities of OOo ?