There is a very contorted way to work around the Writer page structure.
As @Vanadium points out, a page is divided into 3 areas: header, useable-for-text and footer. Footnote space is borrowed from useable-for-text which means footnotes will always be located above the footer border.
If you accept to tweak every note, you can hide footer border and “replace” it with the text-footnote separator provided you have tuned it to be exactly the same as the top footer border line. Also, the footer border must be limited to a single top line otherwise the trick will be visible.
A word of caveat before the recipe: I don’t like the trick and it can potentially make your document unreliable.
The idea is to attach an opaque empty text frame to every note. Why so?
- because you don’t know which note will the first on the page due to edits in the text flow
- because it will make immune to future edits where text could be shifted and notes jump to another page
I created a Mask frame style with following properties:
- anchor To paragraph (to be attached to every note)
- horizontal size: width of paragraph area
Note this parameter is not critical and you might as well set it to paper width to avoid positioning issues.
- vertical size 0.5 cm
However you should set it as small as possible to avoid the frame hiding top of footer text or bottom of last note text.
- horizontal position: Left relative to Entire paragraph area
If you chose to set frame wifth to full page, the reference position becomes Entire page.
- vertical position: to be tuned after you have filled your footer with what you want, From top with a distance such that the frame covers the fotter top border line
- wrap mode: Through + Allow overlap + zero spacing
The overlap option is important so that all frames end up at the same location. The zero spacing avoids that footer contents is flushed by the presence of the frame.
- area color: set it to the same background as what is defined in the page style
Note that I didn’t force it in my sample file, but you should do it to make sure.
- of course, no transparency nor borders
Frame contents may prevent you from achieving precise averlay. Then define an Invisible paragraph style with font size 2pt (the minimum Writer accepts), no space above nor below.
You’re now ready. A good advice: enable View>Text Boundaries and other visual clues to see exactly where the various objects are because they are rather small and become difficult to select.
Insert>Frame>Frame on your first note. By default, it is typed Frame with a border and other default attributes. This is handy to locate it. Apply Invisible paragraph style to the empty paragraph inside. Then apply Mask frame style to the frame (you need to reselect it after having processed the inner contents).
For the other notes, use the Navigator. Double-click on a frame name (corresponding to a masking frame) to select it. Copy then paste in the new note. If you have other frames in your document, it is a good idea to rename the masking frames to quickly identify them.
Limitations
The trick is not guaranteed to work on multi-paragraph notes unless you paste a masking frame in every paragraph, just in case the note extends on several pages.
Similarly, it will not work if a single-paragraph note spills over on next page (unless there is another note in the overflow page.
Personal opinion
This trick is ugly and stuffs too many “artificial” frames in the document. If there are really many many notes, this could make your document unstable. So evaluate if this is really what you want. @Vanadium’s advice to reconsider your layout is probably the way to go.
AskLOSimulateFooterFootnote.odt (11.5 KB)
