Does Writer have something equivalent to Microsoft Word’s “Normal view”?
This has been an issue with OpenOffice Writer from the beginning. The infamous “Bug 4914” made this request 10 years ago, and still nothing has happened over there. [https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=4914]
Have the LibreOffice folk, with your break from the old ways, decided to tackle this?
Closing this question is a most capricious action. It is relevant – enough people are asking Google that the subject is 2nd on the result list. A ten year wait for implementation does not make it outdated, but instead makes it even more relevant! Please reconsider, Alex!
The same request was added to the LibreOffice bug tracker back in June 2011. I just changed the status to Enhancement, but it doesn’t seem to be a priority for this project either 
If many people are interested in this feature (and don’t have the knowledge to code it) maybe they could join and set a bounty for adding this feature, like someone did for this one:
http://gun.io/open/25/better-windows-7-taskbar-integration-for-libreoff
So long as that issue persists, the Writer cannot be considered seriously for heavy duty users. Sorry to be blunt, but it has been more than ten years…
Hi @Me3, (this seems so meta)
I think that a lot of us wish that LO had this feature. Would you be interested in helping to get this feature implemented? I’m not sure exactly of the next steps, but I can definitely find out if you’re interested in getting involved. Thanks!
I’m not a programmer, and therefore I cannot contribute in any way but financially, which is not worth a lot to me (I have Word). I’ve seen numerous comments over the years why this is not a priority or even considered important: unfortunately, none from the people who work with a lot of text.
@Me3 I agree with you that a “Normal View” (MSO) or “Distraction Free View” (Michael Longval in Bug 37967 ) would be good, and I support this enhancement request. However, until we have this feature, Writer can be used by serious writers as well. Let’s hope we get enough dev-power that the enhancement can be tackled soon.
(commenting tool is not easily found)
this is absolutely necessary for working with longer documents, the waste of screen real estate for useless headers & footers and showing the WYSIWYG pages is a complete pain for anyone needing to deal quickly with a lot of text… especially if the source is from, say, someone advertising a job and one is working through replying to a set of criteria, please think of the job seeker
“Some people already offered money for fixing this at Freedomsponsors …”
→ https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37967#c9
→ http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/203/viewing-option-like-ms-words-normal-view-needed
Has anyone tried the “Web Layout”? You can use the whole screen width to write. Drawback: NO visible page breaks (-----).
[Sorry, can’t find a comment or reply button] @horst: I do use the Web Layout in Writer, but the lack of page breaks and numbering makes it less useful.
@Libcub - Thanks for pointing out the difference between weblay and normal view (of word). This difference is an important one.