Trouble with Text Box exports to a pdf in 7.3.0.3

[ostbits]

I copy and pasted a figure from drawing to writer and found that the embedded text in a text box didn’t export to a pdf. I looked further and found out that the only way that characters in a text box could be exported is when the character Font Class is set to “Black” and not “Automatic”. Trouble is that my background is black, and black on black makes the text ‘invisible’, and I have a lot of drawing objects that have text boxes, so doing the changes manually is tedious. Is there a better way to export text box contents than to change the Font Class to “Black”?

The included files contain the a drawing object and my writer tests.

GraphTest.odg (11.0 KB)
GraphTest.odt (23.1 KB)

[Hrbrgr]

You should make the labels directly in Writer.
Do not copy and paste text boxes from Draw into Writer.
Test and use frames in Writer (Insert>Frame>Frame… menu).

GraphTest with Text Frames.odt (12,9 KB)

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You can also create simple drawings directly in Writer.

[ostbits]

@hristijan.p Well I tried to use text boxes in Writer and saw the same behavior. When Font Color was automatic, then the pdf file did not contain the text, but when Font Color was black, the text was output to the pdf file. I use a black background so when the Font Color is changed to black, the text is not seen. I have not tried to directly enter the text in a frame and I don’t think that I can effectively do this with my data because I don’t see how I can align the input text with the figures drawn.

Is this a bug?

[ajlittoz]

Draw also manages styles.

Instead of designing your objects individually in Draw and tuning their attributes manually, define first styles with the required properties.

Then if pasting Draw objects into Writer doesn’t give satisfaction, modify the style(s) in Draw. E.g. you can change from automatic font color to black and all so-styled objects will be updated. Copy the updated group into Writer.

Note: just like in Writer, Draw styles are hierarchical. Consequently with a “smart” organisation, you just change the attribute in the ancestor and it propagates down the tree.

[ostbits]

@ajlittoz Thanks. The issue still remains that (1) changing Font Color to black means that the text can’t be seen in Writer, and (2) the issue seems to be that text boxes are not WYISWG, no matter if they are from Draw or Writer. My issue is how do I get any text box to export without changing the Font Color. The UI (Options->…) changes to other text works correctly, why not for Text Boxes.

Changing the Draw styles for text doesn’t seem to work. The only text styles list have “Text” as the root of the hierarchy. Changing Text Font Color to black has no effect. Changing the rest of the members of the hierarchy is unnecessary, because they all inherit from Text, but doing so anyway, has no effect. After copying and pasting from Draw to Writer, the text box is invisible in Writer and the text is not exported to a pdf. This is in my sample case where the background is white, not black. I expected that after pasting, the text would be visible in Writer, it is not, and that it would be exported to a pdf, it is not.

I also exported from my Draw file. The output showed the text but used the the UI colors, not black, the style colors. What’s even stranger is that in Font, the colors of the text are black, the style color but not the UI color. So now I’m really confused.

I’m still stumped. Is this a LO bug?

[ajlittoz]

Caution! Styles in Draw are not as cleanly designed as in Writer. Don’t take Text as applying to the shape labels. In fact, I don’t know to which kind of object this Text subtree applies.
Generally, you label some shape and the label is one of the shape properties. Consequently, you must customise one of the Graphic>Shapes entries or create a new one.

If you didn’t assign any specific style to your objects when you created them, they are styles *Default Drawing Style* and this is where you must change text colour in Font Effects` tab of the style. You may need to remove direct formatting to see the effect of your modification.

Generally, it is much better, just like in Writer, to assign a specific user-style to your objects so that you can play on them semantic category per semantic category. Doing so, you separate them, just like you segregate Text Body from Heading n.