Reproducible. I observed the same problem.

Best regards. JBF

Fixed, pending review: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/18156/

While shrinking page height to obtain the Hide Whitespace mode it would be good to follow the established practice of NOT removing the white space :
from the top of the first page, nor 
from the bottom of the last.  

IMO this aids usability and 
it is as done in MS word since way back when.

On a related issue it would be good when Whitespace is Hidden that the space between pages was a 10 or so pixels bigger.

That way the hover mechanism/floating icon 
would no longer distract/interfere with the user 
when they are typing on the first line of each new page.

(In reply to GavinB from comment #3)
> While shrinking page height to obtain the Hide Whitespace mode it would be
> good to follow the established practice of NOT removing the white space :
> from the top of the first page, nor 
> from the bottom of the last.  

The original implementation did exactly that. It removed the header and footer sections, leaving the page size exactly the same. So the contents had more space to fill.

The problem was that pages restructured and pagination changed. So the view was not consistent with the normal view.

Current implementation crops the header and footer and shrinks the page to fit the contents exactly. So pagination and page structure is retained.

I'm not sure what MSW is doing, but I believe it preserves the pagination as well, which is what we're doing.

(In reply to GavinB from comment #4)
> On a related issue it would be good when Whitespace is Hidden that the space
> between pages was a 10 or so pixels bigger.
> 
> That way the hover mechanism/floating icon 
> would no longer distract/interfere with the user 
> when they are typing on the first line of each new page.

Can you elaborate please? Maybe a screenshot would help.

How is the icon distracting now and how would making the space larger avoid this?

Thanks.

Created attachment 121804 [details]
Screenshot of Hide WhiteSpace hover sprite masking text

LibreOffice Writer
Version: 5.2.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
Build ID: a454a9b3ae0f6ab81012fbef7b3ff6f0f44bf6cb
Threads 4; Ver: Windows 6.19; Render: default;

Here's a screenshot.  
The word "The" is masked in the line beneath the cropped page break.

(In reply to GavinB from comment #8)
> Here's a screenshot.  
> The word "The" is masked in the line beneath the cropped page break.

Thanks. Of course any cursor will cover the text it is over. If we make the distance between pages larger it won't solve the problem because that space is not fixed, it depends on the zoom. So one can zoom out enough and still complain that the cursor covers the text. The current space size is chosen to be small enough to hint at the break but to make the content look continuous. Making it very large will be wasteful, and as mentioned depends on zooming.

Luckily, the mouse can be moved if it distracts the user :)

Thanks Ashod
points taken,
but it is a real pain trying to edit footnotes 
with that sprite popping up all the time.

(In reply to GavinB from comment #10)
> Thanks Ashod
> points taken,
> but it is a real pain trying to edit footnotes 
> with that sprite popping up all the time.

In my mind, the Hide Whitespace mode has a certain workflow in mind: to make the _content_ of the page continuous and uninterrupted by distractions (such as headers, footers, and whitespace between pages). It really isn't a substitute for something like the Browser mode, or Normal view.

I do realize that ideally we'd have these values as settings the users could tweak to their liking. But for now we have something that does the job fairly well, but doesn't come with bells and whistles.

Perhaps a good solution to this particular issue you raise is to 'hide the mouse cursor when typing'. It would be great if we could have something similar (if we don't already) and essentially hide the mouse cursor while the user is typing, and show it when they move the mouse. (Feel free to check if we don't have it and file a feature bug to track it.)

Thanks for your suggestions... keep them coming.

Hard break page are correctly displayed in LibO:
- Version: 5.1.6.2 (x64)
- Version: 5.2.7.2 (x64)
- Version: 5.3.2.2 (x64)