Improved rotated text handling in Writer's table rows with automatic height

Posted on: Fri 24 January 2020

Estimated read time: 2 minutes

Writer now has better support for rotated text in tables containing rows with automatic height. This post also presents two related fixes.

First, thanks Otevřená města who made this work by Collabora possible.

Before diving into improved rotated text handling, first a continuous section break import problem (tdf#128605) was fixed: this was a case when we created a new page style, but only a new section was intended. Here is how the fix looks:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ycsIqjpdm5t2n9FQQhKBbWobpsX2cQ0s-ugLn970XwuGafzL79HzNVly6dYUpLMhTQmZq8Aa36kaGIfWfk-MzYmuSr92zhRUxFk1aNqwDOnTy1cyyrRzCguuvp-Wd3LD8XXzo_Aurg=w640

Figure 1. Importing continuous section break, fixed

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jLUVDTY3Z6-IWVCmSfia7ue_aSpXSG7YJK2WqhRCfJkdTgA3cVFRh8TiYZwKRut7vvC0yFkdGBzl9Wpv2auZpg6d84nmDI1gVHBZPmWsf_YA-5qD-SF8Uf2lBG7NOu9RcidR1bQ0ng=w640

Figure 2. Importing continuous section break, original

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/izfhxSHtYg_QmeJdIY_NnX5uiaRsmDHQoPlAsofQSaLJERNzVq_gkOMShR-fzckvAd6E5D-ZEMbr41Db2PEMeUZA8gL-oqJsvf_3PytuxJhL95wz4Fsh-2JakWefx4Tes2MoHlFWWw=w640

Figure 3. Importing continuous section break, reference

What you can see is that the continuous section break used to result in an unwanted page break, and this is gone now.

Regarding the actual rotated text handling (tdf#128611), there were two problems there:

There was a missing flip handling for line shapes
Poor layout of rotated text in table cells with automatic height

Here is how the fix looks like:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GFCNQDcvXsN2w1ADVo10H16FUOYB8i6jBTrPad0r6qa8nt8PmDBDD1oiDfG9Zs9_3eVqdyB-O-u6oWIBAujcyso2utvnDpdE4Bs2PykeJkbh0vSYMZDSIKsjv7vI06j9HUCru2Z19w=w640

Figure 4. Rotated text in table cells with auto height, fixed (both flip of line and text layout)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/IqsWjKbTD03_wnvUMUe_QK1pqdTfZKizoNEHRQDQuvpw_O8mrEQ8AgNk_2qbP49QUpezknqHDxnhn0eYDpfZL833dXaClRPD1e4_wxuTj5mTRTeEgioBCX0djcWa5vNSRdPmnalphA=w640

Figure 5. Rotated text in table cells with auto height, fixed (only flip of line so far)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2Tkkj7oz9Bm9ckPs5lTGwAGBRokEJ0MWxfqrbqu6afp6Xm1I77zft8riW-kTxKo4kJsO6bwMtaZb0XNToFssEc1kkZuzm0qk0H4eLU-xk8DOd-e5eVMtNR6cYD_1FRDWbCIYok1oJg=w640

Figure 6. Rotated text in table cells with auto height, original

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/m3X4dGiUTsFBnVwQhiEpcAQYGAJ_8vbKN93jivrcsKcCvjaornrk0upCvsTmck1e39XISyuYNc47BF1tuyrskoWLuMhpegtbyPh1KjBD7_wD-oLueaaLbjYnrgReSRkS5krvK1y4LQ=w640

Figure 7. Rotated text in table cells with auto height, reference

What you can see is that the line clearing the table cell had a vertical flip, which was lost on import. Also, the rotated text in the "row heading" cells was broken into multiple columns. Both are fixed now.

All this is available in LibreOffice master (towards 6.4), so you can try it out right now, if interested.

Category: libreoffice – Tags: en