Unable to disable field shadings

[Greg Michalec]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org2

In openoffice.org writer (version 1:2.3.0~oog680m1-1ubuntu3), it seems impossible to disable the grey background that occurs behind computed fields (i.e. Outline Numbering, Bullets, Page Counts, etc.( According to the Help, it should be possible to view the document without these shadings by:
a) Toggling 'View Field Shadings' (View->Field Shadings or CTRL-F8)
b) View the document in 'Page Preview' Mode (File->Page Preview)
Currently neither of these options seem to disable the shading.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new document in OpenOffice Writer.
2. Toggle Bullets on from the bullets button on the toolbar
3. Type several lines of text - notice the grey shading beneath the bullet characters
4. Use View->Field Shadings to toggle Field shadings off
5. The grey backgrounds remain

Expected behavior - the shadings should disappear

[Alex (alexstrabala-deactivatedaccount)]

I am also experiencing this bug and it is very annoying.

[TJ (tj)]

Confirmed here with openoffice.org-core 1:2.3.0oog680m1-1ubuntu3 and Writer on Gutsy Tribe-5 64-bit.

[TJ (tj)]

If you do Tools/Options OpenOffice.org > Appearance - Custom Colours - Text Document
and turn off Field-Shadings they remain, so it does look like a bug in OOo, not some desktop/theme/compiz settings.

[Alex (alexstrabala-deactivatedaccount)]

A very lame workaround is to just change the color of the field shadings to white, then they aren't really visible and distracting.

[Endler (len-infocentric)]

I'm also having this problem, and agree it is extremely annoying. It's the main reason I don't use Abiword; it doesn't have any option to turn off field shading. Now I have to put up with it in OOWriter too. This is going to be a major turn off over anyone contemplating moving from Windows/Word to a Linux word processor.

My question is: Is this a problem with Ubuntu's compilation of OpenOffice 2.3, or an upstream problem? I asked if someone would confirm this bug in the freenode openoffice.org formum, but nobody ever seems to reply to questions in there. I hope it's just an Ubuntu problem, because the OOO responds VERY, VERY SLOWLY to bug reports. I reported an OOCalc bug 10 months ago, and someone from OO just got around to confirming it and assigning it "new" instead of unconfirmed last month!

[TK (tkrishan)]

Confirmed on 1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5 on two different installations of Ubuntu 7.10 This is a very annoying defect and the workaround was not intuitive to me. Thanks TJ for the workaround.

The gray background on the bullets or numbers of bulleted paragraphs is present on newly created and previously created documents. The gray background prints and is exported to the PDFs.

This bug is not present on my WinXP OpenOffice 2.3.0 implementation.

[James Justin Harrell (herorev)]

I create a bug for this at OpenOffice.org, and they decided this was a problem in Ubuntu's build.
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=82853

IMO, bugs introduced by Ubuntu (or Debian) should be given special priority. It looks very bad when a distro introduces bugs, especially in such important applications like OpenOffice.

[Rene Hausleitner (rene-hausleitner)]

What I found out is that the problem is caused by the patch "sw-field-patch.diff".
Omitting it results in correct behaviour.

[danielm (danielm+ubuntu)]

Same fault appears on OpenOffice_org-writer-2.3.0.1.2-10 with openSUSE 10.3. Lame workaround from strabes above works a treat here too ;-)

[Roberto Sarrionandia (rbs-tito)]

I'm marking this as confirmed. I've installed Gutsy on many machines and they all experience the bug. I too took the lame workaround of changing field shading to white.

[Evgeny Kuznetsov (nekr0z)]

The bug still exists in latest Hardy (openoffice.org-writer 1:2.3.1-3ubuntu3)

[fsando (stfs)]

I guess further confirmation on 7.10 isn't necessary ;).
It just makes you look so bad when you are advocating Linux/Ooo, and apparently no plans to fix it anytime soon.
Does anyone know why the patch was included in the first place? Was it an oversight or a deliberate act to solve something else?

[Evgeny Kuznetsov (nekr0z)]

The issue still persists in latest Hardy (OO.o 2.4). Is anybody ever going to take assignment for this bug?

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Evgeny,

You say this bug still exists in Hardy? I just tested it and it doesn't appear for me, the grey background goes away when I don't have: View->Field Shadings enabled (checked). The fact that it shows the grey box when it is checked is a feature and is supposed to happen, the bug is that it used to not disable when you unchecked the option. This appears to be fixed in ooo-build on Feb 5, 2008.

And actually for the original bug of the bullets showing grey, they never show grey for me anymore I guess they aren't considered 'Field's anymore.

If you can prove that it still happens in current Hardy (screenshot with version showing from Help->About showing the version you are seeing it on then feel free to reopen this bug.

Chris

[Greg Michalec (greg-primate)]

I confirm that this bug appears to be fixed, using hardy openoffice.org 1:2.4.0-3ubuntu1. Bullets seem to be no longer considered 'fields', but if you open a new text doc, insert->field->date, the date will have a gray background. Toggling View->Field Shadings off causes the gray background to disappear, as is expected. Additionally, field shadings do not appear in 'Page Preview' mode, regardless of the state of view->field shadings. Thanks!

[Evgeny Kuznetsov (nekr0z)]

Sorry, I was judging by the non-breaking spaces that were shown grey. It turned out that all other fields were white, and I have found that I have had overriding settings for non-breaking spaces set (probably some Fedora heritage - I'm still using the same /home directory). Sorry again to have caused additional work, and thanks to bug team for fixing.