Closely related to this bug (actually a design flaw) is the lack of the "hide white space" function as it is called in MS Word. The feature request on the OpenOffice buglist dates back to 2002. See http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=8006.

The inability to display formatted text in a continuous flow (i.e. without upper and lower margins and headers/footers) in OOo/LibO has been a major obstacle for the adoption of OOo by professional writers and companies.
Imho, the importance of this issue is grossly undervalued by the developers. It is a permanent nuisance for users and, worse still, a instant dealbreaker for many newbies.

The problem still persists.

Also, please see Open Office Writer views design proposal:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer_Views#Draft_Layout

*** Bug 40231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Not really a bug.

Rather a LONG overdue feature enhancement.

I have recently come back to LibreOffice (used OpenOffice and StarOffice before that), after having used MS-Word.

I concur that LibreOffice needs a Normal View where formatting and fonts are not displayed, just the text (bold and italic is acceptable).

This would go a long way to bridge what LibreOffice has to offer as a writing tool and what programs like WriteRoom, OmmWriter, PyRoom and multiple others have to offer : DISTRACTION FREE WRITING.  

1) Call it "Distraction Free View"  --- rather obvious

2) Allow for a DIFFERENT color theme than for Web or Print view.  For those of you who are old enough : Remember WordPerfect white on blue screen.  I am still drawn to that. Currently the chosen color theme applies to BOTH Web and Print view.  So if I chose to edit text in Web View (sorta of a stopgap) with a blue backgroud and yellow font. That color theme is carried over to Print view when I want to check formatting.  I have to go and change the color theme.  It's a pain.

3) If we really want to go wild...: allow for different keybindings in "Distraction Free View"

- a Vim mode
- or and Emacs mode
- or Wordstar mode (would probably get some old science fiction writers, who are still useing WordStar, to switch to LibreOffice.)

What can I do to help you with this?

Sounds reasonable. +1 for the ideas

(In reply to comment #5)
> Not really a bug.
> 
> Rather a LONG overdue feature enhancement.
> 
> I have recently come back to LibreOffice (used OpenOffice and StarOffice
> before that), after having used MS-Word.
> 
> I concur that LibreOffice needs a Normal View where formatting and fonts are
> not displayed, just the text (bold and italic is acceptable).
> 
> This would go a long way to bridge what LibreOffice has to offer as a
> writing tool and what programs like WriteRoom, OmmWriter, PyRoom and
> multiple others have to offer : DISTRACTION FREE WRITING.  
> 
> 1) Call it "Distraction Free View"  --- rather obvious
> 
> 2) Allow for a DIFFERENT color theme than for Web or Print view.  For those
> of you who are old enough : Remember WordPerfect white on blue screen.  I am
> still drawn to that. Currently the chosen color theme applies to BOTH Web
> and Print view.  So if I chose to edit text in Web View (sorta of a stopgap)
> with a blue backgroud and yellow font. That color theme is carried over to
> Print view when I want to check formatting.  I have to go and change the
> color theme.  It's a pain.
> 
> 3) If we really want to go wild...: allow for different keybindings in
> "Distraction Free View"
> 
> - a Vim mode
> - or and Emacs mode
> - or Wordstar mode (would probably get some old science fiction writers, who
> are still useing WordStar, to switch to LibreOffice.)
> 
> What can I do to help you with this?

Although I got used to teh views available in Writer, I still miss the "Normal View" of Word. 

Michael Longval explanations and proposals are excellent!

I hope we can get them realized in Writer soon.

Well, this is what I would call a perfect feature for end users (and the outline view request as well).

Some people already offered money for fixing this at Freedomsponsors: http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/203/viewing-option-like-ms-words-normal-view-needed

You might consider increasing that money if you want to get this implemented (You pay only when it has been implemented).

Using the navigator now for almost a year I am still missing beside the normal view the outline view of word.
Also Emir can pointed this out.

I offer my time for testing the new SW as long as I can run the test version parallel to my production version currently 3.6.5

I agree with Comment 1 and hope to see the "hide white space" feature implemented soon. This is the most important feature for me.

Links in my original post have been outdated while the Open Office product has travelled from Sun to Oracle to Apache Foundation. Here are the current ones:

The original bug report / feature request: 
    https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=4914

Bug votes of importance:
    https://issues.apache.org/ooo/buglist.cgi?field0-0-0=votes&type0-0-0=greaterthan&value0-0-0=259

(The original report was made 2002-05-15, so in the next month it is celebrating its 11th anniversary. BDS Project had once a 25 year old one fixed, so there is still hope.)

Instead of the "hide white space" feature I use the "web layout", but that is not rally the same. Too bad, because it is a really nice future.

Set back to enhancement.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Bugzilla/Fields/Severity

Best regards. JBF

Let me second this request for enhancement.

I've just registered here to state my view that "Hide Whitespace" is NOT an adequate substitute for a Normal View. And that there is a meta-bug here in the form of developers not getting why a Normal View is such a "Critical! Need to have! Feature!" for many users (or rather non-users) of Open/LibreOffice. When I've gripped about this elsewhere, the usual programmer response was that it was a bug in my wetware - that my need for a Normal mode meant that I was trying to write prose in the wrong way. 

The reasons why "Hide Whitespace" is not an adequate substitute for Normal View include: 

- The proper behavior for Hide Whitespace is to show the blank page below the last line down to the bottom margin. The proper behavior for Normal View is to show the first line on the next page *immediately* below the last line of the page. 

- The proper behavior for Hide Whitespace is to stagger margins from page to page, when, e.g. the document has alternating left-and-right margins on odd-and-even pages. The proper behavior for Normal View is to align left margins from page to page, even if the left margin is (e.g.) 0.5 inches on one page and 1.5 inches on the next. 

- The proper behavior for Hide Whitespace is to display a thick, dark-gray line between pages that serves as a clear (and somewhat intrusive) end-of-page warning. The proper behavior for Normal View is to display a thin, light-gray start-of-next-page line that the user will notice only if he looks for it - that he can easily ignore.

Still not working in  6.1.3.1

Web view is pretty close (unlike "Hide Whitespace") but neither is proper view: 

 - missing in view selector on the bottom toolbar - not discovearble
 - not remembered across restart

*** Bug 121107 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Now this is another brilliant comment:

(In reply to Jean-Baptiste Faure from comment #20)
> Removed myself from CC because I am not interested in MS-Word things.
> 
> Best regards. JBF

MS Word is a major competing product which makes it part of the ecosystem in which Libreoffice lives. Further it is only used as an example of well known implementation of the feature. Other software implementing it is mentioned in the comments. But it has something to do with MS Word so not interesting. And this comes from a person with @libreoffice.org address meaning it is supposed to be somewhat representative of the project /o\

Changing priority back to 'medium' since the number of duplicates is lower than 5

How is Bug 121107 ("hide whitespace" not persistent) a duplicate of this bug?

Bug 121107 an independent bug of its own, whether on not one considers "hide whitespace" to be a reasonable and adequate resolution of this bug 37967 - 'Option like "MS WORD's normal view" needed'

Hello all,

While not entirely related I got told to point info her about another view mode which I think would be useful: a Reader View. This would be similar to Firefox reader view, allowing people who read documents in Writer to be able to toggle a mode that makes reading easier.

In effect toggling this view it would activate:

1. A darker background, less straining to the eye than the default white (say a pale yellow
2. Scaling of font size 
3. Change in font colour that contrast with background in a non aggressive way (e.g. brown)
Users could choose the colour scheme and font scaling of their reader view.

Ideally you could toggle this view on and off easily with a button in the same way you toggle say track changes.

I filed it as a separate bug 151320 as what is discussed here is a new writing view rather than a reading view but I suppose it might help having different ideas on new views place to see what gets traction from users and developers.