https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154785
--- Comment #4 from ajlittoz <[email protected]> --- (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #2) > Do you think beginners use the SI to understand why the page numbering > fails? Doubt this. Can we improve the workflow somewhere else? Since they already don't read the Writer Guide, I doubt they'd use the Style Inspector to debug their documents. Anyway, the current report stemmed from an "advanced beginner" (since he used the SI to try and understand) question on AskLO. (In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #3) > (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #2) > > Can we improve the workflow somewhere else? > > Maybe the proper place would be the offset in the Page Number field, > expanding the label somehow to tell something in the line of "show the > number of page N pages from this" (yes, yes, my wording is awful, I just > hope others would get an idea, and create something usable from it :))? This is a good idea and a simple way to solve the API naming problem but the ambiguity in the Style Inspector remains. Instead of simply "Offset", "Reference page number at offset" ? However the topic is more complicated than I thought. I made a small experiment playing with offset, starting page number and format. It turns out that offsetting page number results in the number the offset page would have received in the current page sequence. To illustrate, my test document is made of: - one page "First Page" style with a, b, c => page a - one page "Default Page Style" style with 1, 2, 3 starting at 10 => page 10 - one page "Endnote" style with A, B, C => page A I then tweak the offsets: - +1 in First Page => page b, not page 10 (b is correct if second page would have been numbered in the current sequence) - -1 in "Default Page Style" => page 9, not page a (9 is correct if first page would have been numbered in the current sequence) Since I was surprised by the outcome, I tried more negative offsets: -2 to -9 decrease the page number down to 1 though the physical page does not exist. -10 gives page 0 which is quite odd typography-wise. Only when the offset is large enough to target negative number does the page number become blank. With positive offset, even very large ones won't give a blank page number though the page does not exist. - -1 in "Endnote" => page "blank" (because there is no valid number before A) Positive offsets always give a non-blank number though the page does not exist. It looks like the "non-null offset references another page" is valid only when there is no forcing page number in the page break. With a forced page number, the existence of the page is not taken into account and a page number is returned if it can be represented in the sequence. This makes it even more confusing. In the end, I question the usefulness of an offset parameter. Even in the case of "see page current+offset", we can't conditionally display this text because there is no way to reference page+offset in a variable for hidden text condition. The "see page at offset" can be replaced by a cross-reference with a more reliable result, except for returning a blank for non existing target. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
