Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 12933
Winword footnote anchor character does not have to appear at the start of the footnote
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:38:26 UTC
When importing an RTF file created by WordPerfect 9.00738 (Win 95) endnotes are misnumbered following the ninth, not in the text but in the endnotes themselves. 10 => 00, 11 => 11, 12 => 22, etc. Attached should be an rtf file which gives me the problem. I have also experienced this with imported a MS word doc but cannot duplicate it. I don't know if this happens with footnotes.
Created attachment 5404 [details] rtf file which when imported gives OO endnote numbering error
Thank you for using and supporting OOo. Verified in 1.1 Beta 2.
Reassigned to MRU
MRU->CMC: The RTF code produced by WP looks very different from the code MS Word produces, when the text contains footnotes/endnotes. As it looks, even Word is not able, to interpret the sample file fully correct. When I look into the note options in Word, it displays a different format e.g. Will we ever be able to interpret such simplified RTF better?
Re-targeted to 2.0
cmc->ama: The problem here is that in .doc and in .rtf the footnote anchor in the main text is a property of the preceeding character, and not a true physical element of its own. Being superscript is a secondary property on the footnote anchor character. In word the footnote anchor character is not actually automatically prepended to the footnote itself by word, it is only copied there by the UI when you insert a footnote and a superscript property applied to it, the user can select this text in the footnote and delete it if they wish, or otherwise change its properties. For automatic footnote numbering a placeholder character is used and its value calculated. This placeholder is also possible to delete from the footnote to leave it unnumbered in the footnote itself. Generally the user doesn't delete the footnote prefix character so the algorithm to attempt to remove the first chararacter from the footnote on the assumption that the footnote anchor character that will be prepended to the footnote will be the same as the removed character works. Nevertheless documents like this .rtf document are possible in word where the characters in the maintext with footnotes attached are actually superscripted 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,1,2 and the respective footnotes themselves start with unsuperscripted 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,8,9,1,1,1. So the footnote anchor character doesn't match the starting character of the footnote in value or superscript properties. I can see no proper solution in the filter, except some hacks to search for common prefixes, but that would fail in some circumstances and force the starting characters in the footnotes here into superscript.
I'm not sure that we'll change this for the 2.0.
We will not find a solution for OOo2.0.
cyb->ama: is this something Win95 specific? Furthermore, if this is not possible to fix properly, shouldn't we close?