https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72424

--- Comment #19 from Owen Genat <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to comment #17)
> Maybe I missed something, but the document refuses to rest... Now 43 pages
> become 48.

Same problems I mentioned last time, with the exception of the page margins.
The font size has been increased (from 10 pt) to 12 pt, thus the length (once
calculated) is now 48 pages. This has to be determined by the rendering engine
(by reading through the entire content) as it is not stored in the document.
This is normal, as the following hopefully explains.

(In reply to comment #18)
> My thinking is that, ... the layout of a particular ODT is roughly 
> deterministic. Or it should be.

I am not one for analogies, but here goes ... There is a difference in
computational performance when reading from disk/memory in random-sized chunks
vs reading in consistent block sizes that match the handling ability of the
operating system. As is always the case with computers, knowing the magic
numbers usually helps with performance (and sometimes stability). On-screen
rendering is the same, it is just that the magic numbers are the derivative of
400 years of typesetting.

Unfortunately, that history is now largely discarded/forgotten, as evidenced by
the Design team's recent reworking of the default Writer template. Proportional
measures, mismatched sizings, keep-with-next/orphan/widow and similar auto-
settings, as well as many other subtle/hidden settings such as table spacing,
all come at a cost. In simple terms, the rendering engine has more work to do,
particularly if direct formatting is used in an ad hoc manner. This is one
reason why I would never use the default settings (template) provided with LO,
in situations where layout is important.

By contrast, a single page style with *exactly* calculated / matching margins,
head/foot area, footnotes, text lines, table spacing, et al. is much simpler
for the rendering engine to handle and more likely to produce a consistent
result as there is minimal variance. The stability in the example I provided
was not by chance. We could create a template using these types of figures, but
the problem is it varies according to the number of required heading levels
i.e., in order to know how far up the point scale the headings go. This is the
nature of typesetting.

I have seen most versions of MS Word behave in the same manner as reported here
(for the same reasons). I honestly do not believe there is any effective way
around the problem reported here, other than what I have tried (in limited
manner) to illustrate.

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