defective field in header on one page

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#1

I'm carrying out a minor rework on a book I wrote in Writer some 3 years' ago. The problem which is stumping me is that the field which displays the chapter name in the header of the right hand pages is missing on page 37.

All other headers and footers are displaying their fields correctly. I have applied the field shading (View > Field Shadings) and I can see the shading.  But it has shrunk down to the size of a single space on this page.  A right click on this space gives the option to edit fields so Writer is convinced that the field is there and produces the dialogue box with the field name, Chapter Name, which is correct.

Anything I do to reapply this field or edit the field in page 37 appears in all the other right hand page headers as well.

I can't see anything in the style spec of p37 that differs from any of the other right hand pages. I've tried deleting this page and reinserting but the problem gets inherited by the new page.

Does anyone know what I'm missing here?

Philip

#2

Did you try just clearing all direct (non-styled) formatting from that chapter name?

#3

Yes - that was a very early attempt. It didn't change anything.

Philip

#4

Hmm... when you go from p36 to p37 to p38, the Page style changes from LH to RH to LH? - any other style changes?

[FWIW: If it's not confidential, I would not mind to take a look and puzzle over it.]

John

#5

A quick note to close the problem - I never managed to understand exactly what was wrong with the document so I took the straightforward way out. I made a new template and copied the body text over as plain unformatted text (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V). After final reformatting, all is well with the new version.

Philip

#6

In order to see better what's going on , you can save the file as .fodt and
search for the name of the field that shows up in the header in a plain
text editor and pay attention,looking especially for an extra set variable
tag around the content that appears on page 36. Once you understand where
it is, you should be able to see a set variable field shading in the body
text that can either be restored to the correct chapter heading value for
37 or deleted if it is extra.

The fields are set in the body text and displayed in the page definition.
When you 'set' the value on the header, that doesn't change page 37 but the
page definition for all pages. you want to find where it is set. examining
the .fodt file, or the content.xml in the .odt will help you understand
this.

#7

I had looked at the .fodt file in a plain text editor and did find where the chapter name field had been set in the right hand editor up in the definition areas.  But when it came to trying to spot a change in tagging around the p36 / p37 interface in the body, I couldn't spot anything of help to explain my trouble.

What did impress me though was the terrible amount of stuff stored in the LO Writer file that is not relevant to the actual document. I was reminded of a problem I had when I upgraded the LO suite a few years' back. At that time, Writer seemed to think I was working in Spanish language when I have never used Spanish and had specifically selected the UK English version to download.

In the xml stuff of my problem file, near the top were two lines defining the language as Spanish. This must surely be a relic of some LO developer's work still hanging around in template definitions.

There were also several page definitions of 8.5" x 11" (US Letter size) and none of the page styles I used in that document were of that size.

A single sentence written in a single font style appears with three sets of <span> tags referring to 3 different text styles. When looking up to see what is the difference in these text style definitions, the only difference is in the officeooo:rsid number, whatever that is. The context makes me guess that it refers to different flavours of the English language.

I was hoping to pass on the file for others to look at but it has now been messed around with so much that it would be a waste of everybody's time. Thanks to all those who offered to help.

Philip