Why can I "insert" Page Number outside the footer or header?

A few years back I no longer needed to use a M$ Office so I switched to LibreOffice. I have quite a few files in LibreOffice but nothing that has ever needed the spit and polish of M$ Office.

And yet, just moments ago, I found myself needing to insert a page number in a Writer file I’m working on and was surprised to see that going to insert>Page Number did not in fact open the footer with a brand new page number but “inserted” a page number wherever the cursor was. After a quick online search I found out why.

Now, far be it from me to criticize how LibreOffice is programmed but it does seem rather idiotic to allow the “insertion” of a page number in a location where it will do no good. Don’t get me wrong. I get it, you’re not Microsoft, you can’t afford the spit and polish of an Office suit that takes 5 minutes to load a blank file, but when I open a new Writer document I can’t Cut, or Copy, or Undo, or Redo anything. The buttons are grayed out because there is nothing selected to Cut or Copy, nothing has been done to Undo or Redo. And yet, when I go to Insert and try to insert a Page number, not only am I given the wrong impression that, like in other office suits I’ll be able to just insert a page number with just one click, but I’m allowed to perform what at the end of the day is a competently pointless task. The insertion of a number at a point in the page were it doesn’t belongs and were it will have no further effect on the rest of the document.

Make no mistake. I’m not asking how to insert a page number. Insert>Header and Footer>Footer/Header> Default Style and then Insert>Page Number. I’m asking WHY I, as a user of LibreOffice, am allowed to “insert” a page number wherever my cursor is. I’m not really inserting anything there since LO won’t just remember the relative position of my cursor on one page and then create at relative positions on the all other pages of the document new page number continuing to count. All it does is insert a pointless number where it doesn’t belong.

LibreOffice was born from OppenOffice.Org, itself born from Star Office. How is this small thing still an issue after 33 years of more or less continuous development?

Inserting a page number to an arbitraty place makes sense. Although inserting it to headers or footers is more often needed, sometimes it makes sense in text body, too. You may notice that the field even has an offset feature, which allows using it for some reference use cases. So no, it doesn’t make sense to try to outsmart user by inserting the field to a place other than current cursor position. Learning some things only takes once, for increased versatility.

It’s true. RARELY one does need to add page numbers on the actual page, with the test and not in the margins or the header or footer. It happens rarely, but it happens. It in fact happens so rarely that MS didn’t even include such an option in their office suit for most of it’s existence. LibreOffice, on the other hand, seems to relish in making the rare exception the norm.

Don’t confuse semantics and usage. I agree that most of the time pagenumbers are inserted in header or footer. But pagenumber is just a field like others and fields are very useful for cross-references of all sorts. So why should LO Writer constrain creativity of authors? I find very valuable that a generic mechanism is offered without artificial limits. As long as it makes sense, i.e. it does not lead to un-computable request, let user find a useful usage for him. Note: I already inserted a pagenumber in text in its offset variant.

Except it’s not really like any other field, now, is it? All other field are under Insert>Field and Insert>Field>More Fields. Page number is both in there and in the general Insert Menu. It’s made very visible, and made to be easily used for the exceedingly rare case, the more common usage case requiring more clicks. The exception made into the norm.

While you find the generic mechanism a great and valuable thing I find it an annoyance and a distraction. There’s a reason why the “artificially limited” tool is what’s usually available. It’s because it’s what’s usually needed. A chef’s knife is a great tool, but I don’t want to use one to butter my toast.

Then again, this does seem to be a problem shared by quite a few open source projects. Offer the user an incredibly powerful but bare-bones program and hope he’s smart enough to learn how to correctly make use of it.