What exactly are you wanting to include in the header? I don’t mean some generic term like “chapter name”. What does the term “chapter name” refer to? Do you mean the name of the sub-document file (i.e., document information) or do you mean the first Heading 1 entry in the sub-document (i.e., paragraph style) or do you mean a bookmark (i.e., cross-reference)? These are all different things. Writer can possibly do what you require, but you may not be used to using it and the more complex the layout the more page styles you will require e.g.,:
- chapter title page (no head / foot)
- chapter leading page (no foot / special head with title of chapter)
- chapter subsequent page (foot with page number / head with book title)
Those are three different page styles. Page styles are how Writer handles difference in the head / foot area of a page. In Word you use sections. The Word file specification (OOXML) and OpenDocument specification (ODF) take quite different approaches in how to treat the page structure of a document.
There are also limitations that must be worked around. For example, all document information fields will pertain to the document being edited i.e., if you are editing the master document then the file name will be the name of the master document file, whereas if you are editing a sub-document then the file name will be the name of that file. For your purposes this makes it pointless pulling the “chapter name” from the name of the file. It needs to be the Heading 1 title at the beginning of the sub-document or a cross-reference to a bookmark or similar.
My answer here and the example I provide may also be of use.
If none of the above helps, and you feel the present functionality is lacking, please raise an enhancement request. Be as specific as you can in describing the particular behaviour you require. Don’t forget to mark your bug as an ‘enhancement’. The QA team will be happy to help you triage your feature request in the bugtracker.
Please post a link to any bugs you file in a comment below using the format “fdo#123456”.
Thanks.