If a title (a "heading1", for example) is something like this: This is a very very very long long long title split over several lines. the title field will reflect the whole paragraph, but in my heading I want, instead of that, the following : A long title... That is, a reduced version. In latex, you can assign a brief "alias" to a very long title (something like \Chapter[brief title]{The very long complete title}), so if you use a fancy header, the alias and not the actual title is displayed in the header. In OOo, the title field display the whole paragraph, correctly aligned with line breaks when needed, but there is no way to set an "alias", which is an important limitation to the design of complex documents.
Sure, that would be an interesting possibility, though we may need to extend ODF at some point. This is slightly more than an easy hack... any taker for this?
[This is an automated message.] This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases. Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1 more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html
Dear bug submitter! Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs. To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem. Yours! Florian
RGB: I'm sorry if my question is dumb since I am not an expert of Writer, but what do you mean by the title field? Does this issue persist in current versions, and if so, can you provide a clear example?
(In reply to Philippe Cloutier from comment #7) > RGB: I'm sorry if my question is dumb since I am not an expert of Writer, > but what do you mean by the title field? Does this issue persist in current > versions, and if so, can you provide a clear example? A Heading field. At some point (this report is from 2010) it changed name: Insert → Field → More fields → under Document select Heading. Anyway, for some reason this report was closed on 2012 (back in the day I was not paying attention to online stuff). I'm reopening it because it's still relevant, I think.
Can you elaborate on the possible uses of the "short title field"? I want to understand whether this bug and 170459 are duplicates of each other, or whether you're asking for something slightly different. Specifically, what do you mean by "using a fancy header"? Also please say whether you're suggesting a plain-text alias, or formatted content.
The "fancy header" is not important for the discussion, it's just a LaTeX package that you use to set up your page headers. Writer offers a field to reference a heading (chapter or section title, for example) into the page headers, but it always copy the exact same text you wrote on the heading. LaTeX offers an option where you set not only the heading text, but also an alternative text to show on the header and the TOC. Sometimes you write a a long, descriptive chapter or section title, but it results too long for using on your headings (or the TOC, maybe), and that's where the "short title" comes in handy.
(In reply to RGB from comment #10) > but > it results too long for using on your headings (or the TOC, maybe), and > that's where the "short title" comes in handy. It should be "too long for using on your headers" (English can be confusing...)
*** Bug 170459 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
We surely cannot introduce an option where the user can specify alternate text for a paragraph, which is then shown on the ToC. What we can do is to protect manual changes and allow to only update the page numbers. My take here is WF.
(In reply to RGB from comment #10) > LaTeX offers an option where you set not only the > heading text, but also an alternative text to show on the header and the > TOC. And by "text" we mean content that may be formatted, right? i.e. how rich are we (or are you) asking for the alternative content to be? Anything one could put in a paragraph? Just plain text? Something in between? (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #13) > We surely cannot introduce an option where the user can specify alternate > text for a paragraph, which is then shown on the ToC. We surely can and that is this feature request. > What we can do is to > protect manual changes and allow to only update the page numbers. I don't see how that sentence is relevant to this bug...
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #13) > We surely cannot introduce an option where the user can specify alternate > text for a paragraph, which is then shown on the ToC. What we can do is to > protect manual changes and allow to only update the page numbers. > > My take here is WF. I have seen several books that use an alternative text to indicate chapter names in the headers (an example I have at hand: "El Quijote") so it's a common practice. I strongly disagree with your comment on protecting manual changes, because that completely defeats the idea of a TOC.
Possible solutions: 1. Finish you document, create the ToC last of all, and modify manually 2. Insert a hidden paragraph with the ToC-specific heading and a non-heading with the same style to show in the document 3. Copy the ToC and paste as plain text 4. Write the heading as text in the simulated ToC and manually add a reference to the page number There are for sure many more solutions that are less convoluted as alternate text for a paragraph. The ToC consists of paragraphs that have some outline level - you can set this property at any PS. And as a consequence we need to offer alternate text for all PS. The few cases when this might be desirable do not justify to confuse every user at almost every time. Despite from the fact that such a feature needs to become standardized. As a solution I suggest to go with bug 169210, to allow updating only page numbers.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #16) > 1. Finish you document, create the ToC last of all, and modify manually * "Manually" is not a valid solution for something like a ToC. Even though we enable manual modification, our commitment must be to automated ToC generation. Including with alternative entry text. * After you finish, you notice you need to make changes. Or the person getting the document wants to make changes. i.e. there is no "last of all" > 2. Insert a hidden paragraph with the ToC-specific heading and a non-heading > with the same style to show in the document And if you automate something like that, you get the ask of this bug. > 3. Copy the ToC and paste as plain text Suffers from the same problem as (1.) > 4. Write the heading as text in the simulated ToC and manually add a > reference to the page number Suffers from the same problem as (1.) > There are for sure many more solutions that are less convoluted as alternate > text for a paragraph. The ToC consists of paragraphs that have some outline > level - you can set this property at any PS. And as a consequence we need to > offer alternate text for all PS. Yes, we do. Of course, that doesn't mean the user has to define alternate text for each paragraph. > The few cases when this might be desirable > do not justify to confuse every user at almost every time. Ok, so here is what we really need to talk about: Can this be achieved without confusing users _at all_? I am pretty sure that it can. > As a solution I suggest to go with bug 169210, to allow updating only page > numbers. Again, that does not solve anything - it still means one has to write the ToC manually. On the contrary, resolving this will open the way to users not having to make manual modifications at all, and perhaps even us eventually being able to drop that affordance. It may also be worth mentioning that this would be an improvement over what MS Office offers. They are still stuck with "fix your ToC on your own" since the 1990s.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #16) > Possible solutions: > > 1. Finish you document, create the ToC last of all, and modify manually > 2. Insert a hidden paragraph with the ToC-specific heading and a non-heading > with the same style to show in the document > 3. Copy the ToC and paste as plain text > 4. Write the heading as text in the simulated ToC and manually add a > reference to the page number Those are not solutions, but workarounds; and only for the TOC, they don't address the problem with the Chapter Field and its use in headers. For the matter, you can drag&drop headings from the Navigator and build your own pseudo-TOC by hand, but that's not the point. For reference, here is how LyX(1) implements this feature in its UI. 1. Start a heading (either a chapter, section, etc). 2. With the cursor on the heading, Insert → Short Title. That's it. A special field is created with, by default, a copy of the actual heading text inside it so you can edit it and get an alternative text. If you don't insert that field the actual heading is used for both, the TOC and the header content. If you insert the field then what you write on it is used instead. If the cursor is not on the header, the menu entry is hidden. On pure LaTeX, you can do even more, getting an alternative text for the headers but not for the TOC by using \chaptermark{Chapter title for header} \sectionmark{Section title for header} at any point. Indeed, you can use these codes to change the header content mid chapter, if you need such level of control. I have no idea how to implement all this on Writer, I'm not a software developer, but from an user perspective something that would be nice to have is a special text field that, if needed, you can insert on a heading and whose content takes preference over the actual heading content. --- (1) https://www.lyx.org/
(In reply to RGB from comment #18) > would be nice to have... That's my point. It would be nice to have for you (and a few other people) but is not crucial for functioning - and over-complicates the configuration. Saying that I'm not opposing any good idea to bring short title into work.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #19) > (In reply to RGB from comment #18) > > would be nice to have... > That's my point. It would be nice to have for you (and a few other people) > but is not crucial for functioning - and over-complicates the configuration. > Saying that I'm not opposing any good idea to bring short title into work. You don't know if we are "a few." And sure, I don't know if we are many either. Nobody knows. Nobody can claim that their "use case" is universal. I only know, thanks to the books I own and the fact that at least LaTeX implements it, that it's not an uncommon feature. That's why I filled out this enhancement request.