How do/can I use a multicolumn frame in a footnote when footnotes are set to "end of document"?

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#1

Although I suspect this is a bug, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing something stupid before reporting it. I have a two-column frame, with text automatically wrapping to the second column. When I insert it into a footnote when Tools | Footnotes and Endnotes | Footnotes | Position is set to “end of page”, the frame inserts just fine and retains the autowrapping. When I set Position to “end of document,” however, the text in the frame stubbornly remains in the first column, and I cannot get it to move to the second column, neither automatically nor using a manual break (Insert | More Breaks → Insert Column Break).

I have attached a simple file to help demonstrate the problem. Right now footnotes are set to “end of page.” Please set them to “end of document” to see the problem. If you don’t encounter it, or figure out how to fix it, please let me know. Thank you in advance.
Multicolumn Frame in Footnote Test.odt (11.1 KB)

ETA: I am using 7.5.3.2.

#2

Can’t reproduce the problem with 7.5.7.1 under Fedora 38 and KDE Plasma desktop.

What is the point of using a text frame in the note? Is this only to lay out your notes in two columns? In this case, send them to end of document and change page style Footnote to 2-column layout.

Also what is this frame at top of text? Is this also for 2-column layout? Then set Default Page Style to 2-column. Using frames is generally faulty because there are no relation order between them and you frequently end up with weird numbering sequences (the order is not the one you expect; notably, don’t rely on the visual or geometric position of the frames to infer they will be scanned, or numbered, in the same order). If you want to alternate between single-column and 2-column, use sections which respect reading order.

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#3

How strange. I just installed 7.6.2.1 and the problem persists. I will file a bug report.

Regarding the use case: this is a one-off need to display some data in two columns in a footnote. Because footnotes don’t currently support tables, this seems to be the easiest way to do it.

The frame at the top of the text was just part of the test to see if the text would properly move from one column to the other.

Thank you.

#4

You can’t indeed insert a table in a note and ths is unfortunate. But if your data is “tabular by nature”, using a 2-column section won’t work because you can’t use the second column before having filled the first one. Forcing a column break does not change fundamentally this.

Your idea of using a frame is however a good workaround. Just insert your table inside it and that’s it.

#5

There is a comment in Bug 76007 - FORMATTING: Make it possible to insert a Table in a Footnote or Endnote where a workaround is given of two text boxes side-by-side works. I just tested it on your document and after creating the text boxes, I set Footnotes to end of document and they retained the same appearance.

#6

Added a comment to tdf#76007 to refresh the bug report

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#7

The data is not tabular by nature – it is a single list, in sequential order, which I would like to display in two columns simply to save space. In this case, a two-column frame would be the ideal solution, since I can adjust the height as necessary and the text will flow from one column to the next. I wish I understood why it doesn’t work in footnotes at the end of the document (or endnotes, for that matter) on my setup.

Thank you for your help.

#8

I reworked on your example file and there seems to be at least two bugs involved.

  • you can insert a section in a note, but no matter how you configure it, it ends up with a single column both with notes at end of page and at end of document
  • with a frame, the number of columns is the expected one however if notes are collected at end of document, manual column break is ineffective. Since footnotes are then equivalent to endnotes (and likely managed by the same code), I’d relate this to page break intentional disabling in endnotes. This means you can’t balance section contents over the columns.

I added this attachment LOBugNoteColumns.odt (42.1 KB) to bug tdf#151474.

#9

Thanks! Here’s the bug report I filed: 157746 – Multi-column text frame in footnote at end of document will not wrap or break text to the second column

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