Footnote display error -- top lines of text cut off

[birit.nari]

I’ve been having a problem with footnotes in Writer through many versions now, where the top lines of some footnote text is partially cut off. This persists when printing, or when saving as a pdf. It’s not consistent, though, as occasionally different notes will be affected in the same document after opening and closing. This happens in particularly long documents; the current example is around 17,000 words with 146 footnotes, some of which are quite long (it’s a humanities dissertation). In this case, though, only 3 out of the 146 footnotes are affected. I’d rather not upload the document right now, but attached is a screenshot.

Currently using v. 24.2.3.2, but it’s been happening for a couple of years across versions. I have no idea how to diagnose this. Hopefully someone can help?

[ajlittoz]

Your screenshot is absolutely worthless. It indeed shows you have an issue but we can’t analyse your formatting from it (and you didn’t even enable View>Formatting Marks and other visual hints about the effective contents of your document).

How is Footnote paragraph style configured/customised? Have you added direct formatting on your notes?

Can you isolate this page (and perhaps 1 or 2 before and after), making sure the problem is still present? If so, attach this reduced document. And if you consider it still private, try to replace effective text with nonsense (e.g. “lorem ipsum”), again making sure problem is still present.

[birit.nari]

Attached are few pages of nonsense. The issue is still present, where footnote 2 continues from pg. 2 to pg. 3.
Footnotes problem text.odt (46.7 KB)

[Grantler]

Tip: Go to footnote 2, select the entire Text of the footnote (4 × click with the mouse) - then shortcut CTRL+M.

[LeroyG]

@birit.nari

the top lines of some footnote text is partially cut off

Try editing the Footnote paragraph style en delete the upper and lower white borders.

Maybe an issue with Skia, but the the problem is seen in the Print Preview also.

With me:
Version: 7.6.7.2 (x86) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: dd47e4b30cb7dab30588d6c79c651f218165e3c5
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.1 Service Pack 1 Build 7601; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: es-MX (es_MX); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

[Grantler]

@LeroyG

delete the upper and lower white borders

Good point. @birit.nari: What’s the purpose of the white borders? Isn’t space above/below sufficient?

[ajlittoz]

@Grantler

What’s the purpose of the white borders? Isn’s space above/below sufficient?

It has special purpose but, as always, you’d better know and understand thoroughly what you’re doing.

Playing with both spacing/indent and padding allows you to control your box model the same as in HTML. HTML defines the outer space as margin (= spacing above and blow + indents before and after) and the inner space as padding (same word in Writer). Between those, you have the borders.

The major factor here, in addition to what @LeroyG noted (white borders), is the padding. It has to be reset to 0 to get rid of the clipping. It is likely that parameters in Footnote paragraph style were too “tight” for the added direct formatting. There is probably bad interaction between style and direct formatting caused by the padding.

As always, mixing styles and direct formatting is a very bad idea. The newer you are to Writer, the more methodical you should be and stick to strict styling. Writer is very powerful and when you don’t know what you trigger with your spurious direct formatting …

By the way, Tab is used in Body Text paragraph instead of defining a First Line Indent. This is also direct formatting and indent width will be influenced by padding (if used to box the paragraph) because there is a bug in the definition of tab stops in presence of padding.

I see way too much direct formatting in this document. Tuning its formatting will be a nightmare (I evaluate it to be in the ~50-page range). Strict styling is mandatory above 3 pages for your peace of mind.

[birit.nari]

I hadn’t realized that borders were on (being set to white–no memory of doing this). Turning them off did not fix the clipping, but I discovered that, yes, the padding was the issue.

Per the style sheet I’m working with, there must be a “blank line” between each note. Is this best accomplished with bottom padding?

[ajlittoz]

Notes are just “ordinary paragraphs” formatted by paragraph style Footnote. Change Spacing above and below in Indents & Spacing tab. All your notes will be updated simultaneously (provided you have no direct formatting, but considering the ubiquitous direct formatting in your document you’ll probably need to clear it first and restyle everything). Don’t neglect character styles. They replace advantageously Ctrl+B and the like.

The “style sheet” you must comply with (or more exactly the graphical charter) can be implemented elegantly as a collection of styles: paragraph, character, list and page. If you have drawings or pictures, add frame styles.

[birit.nari]

I discovered why I added the white borders: LO Help recommends it.

Spacing Between Footnotes

[ajlittoz]

I wouldn’t recommend this trick except in one circumstance.

In ordinary cases, play with spacing in Indents & Spacing of Footnote paragraph style.

If your notes are made of several paragraphs and you want to make very clear the separation between notes, you’ll increase top and bottom padding with Merge with next paragraph ticked. There is no need to enable any border (even white). With no border (consider “no border” is a 0-thickness border), it works.

Now your notes are considered as a single block and padding space is added only on top and bottom of block. Between paragraphs of the note block, you have the usual spacing.

[birit.nari]

Gotcha. I’ll see if there are any issues there. I also seemed to fix the clipping and retain space between notes by setting the padding to 0 and creating two styles for footnotes, one with spacing below paragraph (for the only or final paragraph in a note), and another with spacing set to 0 (for the initial or medial paragraph in a multi-paragraph note)

[ajlittoz]

The drawback in your 2-style approach is you must apply manually and explicitly the “end-style” to the last paragraph. Reverse the paradigm: customise built-in Footnote for the first note paragraph and create a user style for subsequent paragraphs. To automate the process, attach your “subsequent” style to the Next setting in Footnote Organizer tab. When you hit Enter at end of first paragraph, you automatically switch to your user style.

Note that it is easy to tell what is first and more difficult what is last (you can have a variable number of intermediate paragraphs, while you always have a single “first” one).

[johnmastell]

@ajlittoz

Your screenshot is absolutely worthless

You really should stop treating people who have problems with such apparent disdain and condescension. I further note the screenshot was not absolutely worthless as it initiated answers on how to address the issue.

[ajlittoz]

@johnmastell

I further note the screenshot was not absolutely worthless as it initiated answers on how to address the issue.

Screenshots always trigger additional questions and requests in order to identify the issue. A sample file is much better because it carries all the formatting information. But nonetheless, except in very trivial cases, you can’t draw conclusions from a screenshot.