Writer Guide; Chapter 4 - Formatting pages.

Hi
I am close to finishing updating this chapter, but have run into a problem and am unsure of the protocol.
I was about to write the instructions for formatting footnotes/endnotes when I encountered the problem.
To replicate, have a single sheet document with lots of paragraphs in it (blank or otherwise).
Insert a footnote into the page: "Insert > footnote/endnote".
Click "OK" in the next dialogue box, accepting the default settings. Scroll down to have the footnote in view.
Now edit the footnote. There are a number of ways to get here, but the quickest is to right-click in the page and then select "Page" from the context menu.
Select the 'Footnote' tab.
There are two sections to this page; 'Footnote area' and 'Separator line'.

To demonstrate the behaviour, change either, or both, the 'Space to text' dimension in the 'Footnote area' section, and/or the 'Spacing to footnote contents' dimension in the 'Separator line' section.

Now, if you click "OK", the settings on screen change when the dialogue box exits. That's fine.
Re-edit, 'right-click > Page'.
Change dimensions again, this time, click "Apply". As expected, the changes are executed on screen and the dialogue box stays open.
But ...
The dimensions in the dialogue box now change.
1. If you click "OK" to exit, these newer altered dimensions are applied.
2. You cannot, having clicked "Apply", change the dimensions to anything meaningful.
3. You can exit, having pressed "Apply", by clicking "Cancel" and having the changes which occurred on "Apply" remain in place.
4. Having pressed "Apply", you can then press "Reset", re-do the settings, and then click "OK" to exit.

There are a number of possibilities here I guess.
1. I'm doing something wrong.
2. There's something wrong with my set-up.
3. There's a problem with the Windows version (if it works correctly in other OS's)
4. There's a problem with the software.

So, if someone else can validate my experience, should I write it to instruct on how to do it trouble free, including what shouldn't be done?
Is this a bug, or just aberrant behaviour that needs no further action?. If a bug, what next? Write it warning of this bug?

Advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

John

I get the same thing on windows 7 as well as ubuntu 11.1--both running
version 3.4.4 build 402.

It appears that when you hit "apply" the display changes all the
values to be a function of "maximum footnote height." That would not
be a problem except for the fact that when you click "apply," the
reference point for height changes from the distance from the bottom
of the page to the distance the text area has to be adjusted to allow
for that original height.
It is quite possible that the same calculations are done when you
click "OK" but when you re-edit the values after seeing those strange
numbers, you what you expect to see.
In short, it appears that those strange numbers are the software's
internal calculations and serves no useful purpose to the user except
to confuse him or her.

mark
(a lurker and occasional participant)

Hi Mark
Thanks for verifying the 'feature' exists on other OSes.
Just waiting for advice from the experienced authors on how to proceed.

John

In the end, could you solve this? At least, report a bug?

Regards
Sylvia

Hi Lailah
No, the problem described wasn't sorted out. An explanation was offered of what was happening by Mark. See the thread on Nabble for his opinion.
A cautionary note about it has been written in the Chapter 7 User Guide to inform users of this unexpected behaviour, and a method of avoiding the issue is described.
I haven't raised a bug report. I guess it's something I can look into doing if it's not already out there.

Regards
John