Bug 166530 - No documentation about "Book view" / "Book mode"
Summary: No documentation about "Book view" / "Book mode"
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Documentation (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.0.0 alpha0+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Help
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Reported: 2025-05-11 18:45 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-05-12 17:58 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2025-05-11 18:45:55 UTC
On LO Writer's bottom status bar, one can choose between:

Single-page View
Mutli-Page View
Book View

The exact behavior of Book View is not entirely trivial; and there is no extra tooltip, or introductory pop-up message, informing the user about it. So, it stands to reason it would be describe by the documentation.

Well, 

* If we click F1 while hovering over the Book View button - we get to the documentation root. Specifically, I get:

file:///opt/libreofficedev25.8/help/en-US/text/swriter/main0000.html?System=UNIX&DbPAR=WRITER&HID=SW_HID_EDIT_WIN#bm_id3147244

* If we search for "book mode", which is the term used in the Zoom & View Layout dialog, we find nothing.

* If we search for "book view", there is such a term to be found, but when choosing it, we get this page:

file:///opt/libreofficedev25.8/help/en-US/text/swriter/guide/print_preview.html?DbPAR=WRITER#bm_id3155179

    Previewing a Page Before Printing
    ---------------
    Choose File - Print Preview.

    Use the zoom icons on the Print Preview bar to reduce or enlarge the view 
    of the page.

    To print your document scaled down, set the print options on the Page Layout
    tab page of the File - Print dialog.

    Use the arrow keys or the arrow icons on the Print Preview bar to scroll


That does not describe, nor mention, "book view".



Seen with:

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 7fc7dc679d61f7d5313733005c244c87d25f32fd
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-IL (en_IL); UI: en-US
Comment 1 Jeremy Norvell 2025-05-11 22:19:10 UTC
Thank you for reporting the bug. I can confirm that the bug is present in

Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 2; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:24.2.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.4
Calc: threaded

... as well as:

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 866538a4aeb30a598a6ede3d1763d898eb1920b0
CPU threads: 2; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Accessing the help file in both versions gives a suggested search return for "book view" under the topic of Writer, but the returned results match the text reported below for print preview.
Comment 2 Regina Henschel 2025-05-12 17:16:59 UTC
I think, the help page is https://help.libreoffice.org/25.8/en-US/text/swriter/menu/pageLayoutMenu.html

The text for "Book View" is currently,
"Displays two pages per row, even numbered pages on the left and odd numbered pages on the right."

It might need to be improved to consider other writing modes than "left-to-right".
Comment 3 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-05-12 17:58:36 UTC
(In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #2)
> It might need to be improved to consider other writing modes than
> "left-to-right".

Let's leave the contents of the help to another bug, considering the discussion in bug 117231 and possibly other issues.

It's enough for the purposes of this bug, I think, that F1 will reach that page, and that searching for "book view" and/or "book mode" will find it as well, as the top result.