File->New text doc, Format->Page Style->Text direction Right to Left + Right margin set to 0, Inserted text box will disappear

[YjRk]

As suggested by the commenter of the 1st comment, this is now Bug 142966

I think this is a bug. Asking here for confirmation, or other comments.
With 7.1.4.2, LibreOffice community, I have done the following:

1. File → New → Text Document
2. Format → Page Style…
3. Text direction
   The choice of text direction is the heart of my question. I will start with Left-to-right (horizontal). I do hope that the reader also has the choice of Right-to-Left (horizontal). I am not sure if a Right-to-left choice does not necessitate settings some Tools → Options… .
4. Still with the Page Style settings, I set the Margins, each of Left, Right, Top and Bottom, to 0. Now pressing OK shows a warning about margins setting are out of print range. And it asks whether to apply these settings. I answered yes, to continue applying these settings.
5. Next thing is to Insert → Image… . I inserted an image that is the size of the page. Which is A4 for me. To get an image that is the size of a page, one can separate the 1st page of a PDF file from the other pages of the file, and convert it to an image. JPEG format, in my case. And the PDF file I used is here.
6. Insert → text box. Choose any size for it , as long as the whole box is not larger than the image. Now enter some text in the box, and click with the mouse any where outside the box.

And here is my point: if, in step 3, the text direction was Left-to-right
(horizontal), then after the click with the mouse the text of the text
box is visible. While with a direction of Right-to-left (horizontal), the text disappears.

Thank you.

[mikekaganski]

Yes it is a bug. Please don’t hesitate to file bugs - asking here before filing is just waste of everybody’s time: you waste time asking, waiting, then filing; others waste time by some people needing to read, understand, reproduce and answer here, just before other people needing to do exactly same there in the future bug. Note that everybody’s effort is important, so it’s unreasonable to consider the effort of volunteers here “less expensive” than in the bug tracker.

Just a note: the image in the background is irrelevant. Only the direction and margins are important. Please file it.

[YjRk]

As suggested above, this is bug report tdf#142966

[ajlittoz]

From experiment, this happens as soon as Right margin is set to 0. Text reappears when right margin is set to non-zero even as low as 0.01 cm. Here LO 7.1.4.2 under Fedora 34, KDE Plasma, VCL kf5.

Apart from the bug, what do you need a text box for? Text boxes will always lead you into trouble. Your image seems to be a page background, then write your text as usual. It will display above the image.

If you need textboxes for annotating the image, do that in Draw and import the edited image as a whole. You won’t be harmed by text flow. If your “text” and image are loosely related, anchor the image and a text frame (where you can use all formatting features) to some common paragraph with adequate wrap properties and overlap options. For a caption, use Insert>Caption.

[YjRk]

@ajlittoz: You haven’t mentioned, neither here nor at tdf#142966, setting the text direction to right-to-left. Some might think that the text direction is also not a factor. Which is not the case, by my experience.

As for why am I using text boxes: I have images that are the size of a page. I want to add some short comments at specific places of the image. Where the places of the comments differ from one image to another. I also want to concatenate those page sized images into a single, multiple pages, document. Though I am confused by your suggestion, my impression is that it will not solve my requirement. And using Draw instead of Writer is another issue for me. First, I am far less familiar with Draw than with Writer. In addition, my little experience with Draw suggests it support for RTL text direction is much worse than Writer. Will continue at next comment.

[YjRk]

I reached the characters limit for a comment in my previous comment above.

Continuing from where I break at the comment above, it could be that I am confusing Draw RTL support for importing, commenting, and exporting PDFs to its support for RTL for images.

[mikekaganski]

Some might think that the text direction is also not a factor.

Good objection - but don’t worry, the set of factors is already clear, the only thing left there in the bug (from triaging people) is to identify regressing commit. Thanks for the report, btw! Every report is a great contribution, making LO better.

[ajlittoz]

Apologies, I took for granted that RTL context was part of the initial conditions (and I had to enable it for the bug to happen).

If your pages are “simply” annotations on PDF pages without any “literary” text, you’ll be better off with a multi-page Draw document. Of course, if RTL text is correctly rendered.