Microsoft Words offers several "views" of documents which we don't offer explicitly (or at all). One of these seems to be "Draft View". As described here [1]: > Draft View in Microsoft Word simplifies the writing process by allowing users to focus solely on text and content without the distractions of headers, footers, and other formatting elements. This is unlike Web Layout view, which also eschews pagination, footers and headers, but extends to the width of the page, ignoring paragraph styles; and also renders images and other objects which, in Draft View, are not rendered. I believe a Draft View is useful when editing a document, because: * Pagination is mostly, if at all, important at the late stages of editing (especially since, initially, one can't predict what would fit on each page anyway) and * Pagination can be slow in large documents. * Rendering all sorts of graphical and external objects, with surrounding text, is sometimes slow on slower hardware; and may be a little distracting from editing the actual text. So, I suggest we introduce this to Writer as well. [1] - https://www.nobledesktop.com/learn/microsoft-word/exploring-different-document-views-in-microsoft-word#draft-view-focusing-on-text-and-content
Rather seems another dupe of bug 37817 and its dupes.
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #1) > Rather seems another dupe of bug 37817 and its dupes. IIUC, that proposal is rather different: It proposes a _post-pagination_ view, with all objects laid out; the Draft view is not like that. Now, it's true that the more views we have, the less appealing is adding another one, and that each of these two suggestions would reduce somewhat the appeal of the other one - but they're not dupes.
Not a fan of the idea to have views as a predefined combination of settings. But I can empathize with the idea to hide footnotes. Ultimately a duplicate of 37817, as Stuart said. No benefit to have another ticket.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 37817 ***
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > Ultimately a duplicate of 37817, as Stuart said. No it isn't, and I explained why. > No benefit to have another > ticket. The number of tickets is not a consideration regarding whether two things are a dupe or not; either they are, or they aren't, and this isn't.
László Németh committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/95425de15b1a00e5e31611ff0839564505b3aa4e tdf#168705 ooo#4914 sw: add Draft View (distraction-free writing) It will be available in 26.8.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Great feature, László ❤️ Thank you
(In reply to Commit Notification from comment #6) > Note: similar to the Hidden whitespace mode, Draft View setting > is not saved yet. What exactly is not saved/persisted? The choice of view for the document?
Created attachment 206986 [details] screenshot Laszlo, I am testing this commit. I choose for paragraph justify. And the text is very close to the left page margin, but on the right I have a lot of space. Is this a bug?
(In reply to BogdanB from comment #9) > Created attachment 206986 [details] > screenshot > > Laszlo, I am testing this commit. I choose for paragraph justify. And the > text is very close to the left page margin, but on the right I have a lot of > space. Is this a bug? "Hide left page margin, when View->Whitespace is disabled, so all the body text", I found now the explanation for this.
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #8) > (In reply to Commit Notification from comment #6) > > > Note: similar to the Hidden whitespace mode, Draft View setting > > is not saved yet. > > What exactly is not saved/persisted? The choice of view for the document? I am testing now, if you go in Draft mode, then close the document, when you reopen the document, you will be in Normal mode. The same, if you go to Draft mode, don't see left margin, and enable it from View - Whitespace, and close the document, or close the Draft mode, the Whitespace is not saved as activated anymore, it is not saved.
Created attachment 206987 [details] video testing the bug
We can either open a separate bug for the persistence issue, and close when the fix is verified; or we keep this open. I am ok with either option, let Laszlo say whether he would rather work on the persistence as part of this bug or not.
Created attachment 206988 [details] screenshot From the Full screen mode I choose from the corner Customize toolbar and I added myself Show Whitespace to be easy to turn on/off "Show Whitespace". Maybe this can be done by default.
@László, * The TB103 nightly for 2026-05-12 finally rolled with https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/204934 I like it! Long needed... Only nit I'd have with it is the treatment of the edit canvas. Seems we retain the full inside margin width, but then position draft mode content to left edge (or right edge for RTL). And leaving the excess margin white space at the end of paragraph lines, as big glaring white space we'd want to try harder to reduce? Would think the editable canvas would shrink to fit within the set margins (i.e. suppressing the white space for the content on both sides in addition to the top edge. Same happens at the bottom of the page (in draft mode, the margin space shifts to the bottom), but that is less of a nit. Some mock-ups over on the see also bug 37817. =-testing-= Version: 26.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) Build ID: 9ed2065ed28d6b31b29381c62d4eb08b439df40c CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (build 26100); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US Calc: threaded
Olivier Hallot committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/help/commit/dfe977d8e750dd369e160cc5ae1b67cea4af1a21 tdf#168705 Help page for Draft View in Writer
@Adolfo & all: many thanks for your kind feedback! I would like to ask you for filing the remaining or associated problems in new issues, i.e. missing saving of the Draft View (also View->Whitespace). (Also I have found a possible problem, that switching to the Web View before the Draft View, text lines will still use the screen size for line breaking instead of their fixed width. Workaround: change to the Normal View.) Note: missing screen clearing bug of the Draft View and Web View was fixed in Bug 172186 (resulted by the transparent page background image or color). Commit description: tdf#168705 ooo#4914 sw: add Draft View (distraction-free writing) Add View->Draft View for distraction-free writing, flattening multi-column sections and disabling whitespace, including left page margin. The Draft View keeps fixed line width to avoid of the window-size, often too long text lines of the Web View, too. To focus on distraction-free writing, Draft View supports the followings: – Hide header/footer – Changing to Draft View, disable also View->Whitespace to remove top and bottom page margins and space between pages – Hide left page margin, when View->Whitespace is disabled, so all the body text (e.g. with different left page margin in mirrored page layout) start at the same distance from the left page border, which was a basic requirement especially for the distraction-free full screen mode (Ctrl-Shift-J). – Show multi-column sections as single-colum sections (unlike the Web View). It keeps the original column width, if it's possible, i.e. when all the columns have got the same width. This way no need to scroll back and forth to the previous or next columns during writing and reading. – Changing to Normal View from Draft View, enable also View->Whitespace to show top and bottom page margins and space between pages again. Note: similar to the Hidden whitespace mode, Draft View setting is not saved yet.