Both come from the document's language, read off Intl: the symbol's side
and spacing, the short date's order and padding. Each minted data style
names that language — without it LibreOffice prints its own locale's
separators (probed: a German document's 1.234,00 € came out $1,234.00).
A date is a serial day from LibreOffice's day 0, 1899-12-30. Word's
formula dialog offers no date, so the DOCX leg uses the field's \@
picture. Also drops a document's name from three older comments.
Word's Text Direction and LibreOffice's, on the frame's own toolbar: the
browser lays the vertical flow out, so the box needs nothing but the mode.
ODF keeps it in the frame style's *paragraph* properties — probed: in the
graphic properties LibreOffice drops it, there it keeps it and lays the box
out — and Word in the shape body's `vert`, the VML fallback's
`layout-flow:vertical` read too. Both survive a LibreOffice re-save.
The Formula dialog gains the number format Word's has: whole numbers, two
decimals, grouped thousands and the two percentages beside the general
one.
ODF keeps it on the cell *style* as a reference to a data style — odf-kit
shares one cell style across every cell, so a formatted cell gets a copy
of it — and LibreOffice writes both back unchanged. Word keeps it on the
field as its \# switch; LibreOffice's DOCX filter neither reads nor writes
that switch, so that leg holds through our own round trip.
Continuous or per page, every nth line, empty lines counted or not —
LibreOffice's Tools ▸ Line Numbering, round-tripping as its
text:linenumbering-configuration and Word's w:lnNumType. CSS exposes no line
boxes, so the layer Range-selects each block and takes the distinct tops of
its client rects as its lines; LibreOffice renders the exported file with the
numbers in the same places.
LibreOffice's Format ▸ Page Style ▸ Area/Borders and its Format ▸ Watermark,
all three round-tripping. Probed placements that are not guessable: ODF reads
a watermark only out of the master page's header (and only with xmlns:draw
declared), Word's w:sectPr wants pgBorders after pgMar or it loses the header
references, and the VML shapetype has to travel or LibreOffice cannot resolve
it. On screen the watermark is an SVG textLength, since a fontwork shape
stretches its text to its box rather than setting a font size.
Layout > Page numbers: 1 / i / I / a / A and a first-page number, both
round-tripping. ODF has no document-level start — probed, LibreOffice
puts style:page-number on the first paragraph's own style — so the
export mints one there and the page layout carries style:num-format;
Word takes both in the first section's w:pgNumType. The page *count*
field stays decimal, as the one both of them write does.
Layout > Hyphenation, off by default as in both word processors. The
browser hyphenates in the document's own language (the body host gets
lang and hyphens: auto) — measured, a justified German paragraph takes
15 lines instead of 17. ODF keeps fo:hyphenate in the base style's TEXT
properties: probed, in paragraph-properties LibreOffice ignores it and
drops it on the next save. Word takes w:autoHyphenation.
LibreOffice's File > Properties / Word's File > Info, reachable from
both chromes' file menus. ODF writes them into the meta.xml odf-kit
already emits (one meta:keyword each, generator EdenText); DOCX passes
them to the package's core properties. Both importers read them back,
and LibreOffice shows every field from either format.
Anchors become an FNT sentinel and each note is hoisted to a top-level
paragraph, so its text rides every existing pass — marks, character styles,
links, bookmarks and formulas included; applyNotes cuts the region back out
into <text:note> at the anchor. styles.xml gains LibreOffice's own Footnote/
Endnote styles, the notes-configuration per class and the separator, and the
resolver reads all of it back. The importer builds the section instead of
warning that notes were dropped.
ODF style:writing-mode="rl-tb" and Word's section-level w:bidi were not
read, so a Hebrew two-column page put column 1 on the left where
LibreOffice puts it on the right — checked against pdftoppm of its own
PDF, since the harness bands both columns into one line and never gets
that far. It is a document setting now, applied as `dir` on the body
host, which is all CSS multi-column needs; it also gives bidi the base
direction the file means. Round-trips through both formats. The
header/footer band keeps its own direction, as LibreOffice lays it out.
ODF style:page-usage="mirrored" and Word's w:mirrorMargins make the
declared left/right the inner/outer pair, which an even page swaps.
Read, rendered and written back in both formats; the body rides the
per-block inset a section's own margins already use, the header and
footer band moves with it. Measured on a mirrored two-column file:
its page 2 went from 12.7-184.1mm to 31.8-203.2, which is LibreOffice's
to 0.1mm, and its running head with it.
A sweep of the whole tree: 27 blocks ran to four lines or more. Trimmed
to what the code can't say, with two of them split back onto the
function each was really about.
Page geometry was document-wide, so a title page declaring 1cm started 1cm too
low. w:pgMar / the section's ODF page layout now ride its HfSet and feed the
per-page content area; an ODF master handing over (style:next-style-name) gives
its own layout to the section's first page and the successor's to the rest.
A spacer can only push down, so a smaller margin than the document's needs the
opposite: the section's first block gets a lifting spacer where nothing was
pushed onto its page ahead of it.
Repeating the current master was read as "no switch, no break", so a book
whose chapter heading style names its own page style ran the chapters
together — a fixture lost the break before every chapter. An explicitly empty
name now ends the parent walk, so nothing inherits a break it never asked
for; the section itself still starts only where the master changes.
The body margin reserved the zone's height *plus* its fo:margin-top/-bottom, so
every page with a footer lost a line — a fixture ran a page over. Probed against
soffice: moving a footer's fo:margin-top leaves the last body line exactly where
it was and only shifts the footer text down its band; style:dynamic-spacing
changes neither side. The band is the declared height, the gap sits in it.
One fixture paginates to LibreOffice's 63 pages again.
ODF style:vertical-align (middle/bottom) on a table cell, which every
LibreOffice callout table uses for its Tip/Note label. Import and render
only: odf-kit dedupes cell styles by property, so writing it back needs a
pass of its own — noted in docs/architecture/tables.md.
A hyperlink in a fixture's copyright footer threw generateHTML and
blanked the whole zone. Drop what the one-paragraph schema lacks, keep
its text. A master handing over to a successor is also the different-first-
page flag, so a title master with no zones leaves page one blank.
The default master was the one literally named Standard, which a document
need never reference: a fixture's body runs on OOoPageStyle, so its
footer band went unreserved and every page held ~15mm too much text.
An index longer than a page has no inner document positions for a
pagination spacer, so it now breaks itself between entries.
LibreOffice keeps a paragraph's space above and below in one item, so a
style that declares only one of them does not inherit the other from its
parent chain — the missing half falls back to the default paragraph
style. Probed against soffice with the OPG fixture's own styles, where
it is the difference between a heading sitting flush and 4mm too low.
An ODF master page whose style:next-style-name names another master applies
to a single page. Read as the section's running header, this file's full-page
title background repeated on every page and its height pushed each block onto
its own — 276 pages instead of 16.
Its zones now become the first-page variants, the successor's the running
ones, and a positioned frame in a zone is dropped as in DOCX.
A formula node stores only its LaTeX source; the MathML on screen, the ODF
formula object and Word's OMML are derived from it, and both importers parse
foreign markup back into that source, so an imported formula stays editable.
Word documents were losing their formulas outright: m:oMath sits beside the w:r
runs in its own namespace, past convertInline's `namespaceURI !== W` guard.
LibreOffice restarts the tab grid on the continuation line; Chromium
hangs the leftover tabs and starts the next line at the margin, 160mm
away in the repro. The run is walked from the pen before it — the one
thing the fix can't move, so the answer holds whether or not the break
is already in place — and a break widget goes where the line runs out.
Measuring this turned up why the two disagreed in the first place: a
file that declares no tab interval falls back to ODF's own 2cm, not to
LibreOffice's UI default of 1.25, so leaving ours implied on export
rendered every tab elsewhere. Both exports declare it now, and both
imports fall back to their format's value rather than to ours.
Only runs of two or more are walked: reading a block's geometry forces
a reflow, and doing it per tab across 48 pages slowed pagination enough
that the parity harness compared a layout still settling.
The default tab interval was fixed at 1.25cm, so a file's own
w:defaultTabStop / style:tab-stop-distance was ignored and the DOCX
export wrote 1.25 back over Word's 1.27. It is a document setting now.
A stop can also carry the character it repeats across its gap. odf-kit
has no leader option and mints one automatic style per option set, so
the leader rides style:type behind a sentinel — matching on position
and alignment alone gave every stop at 6cm the same leader, which
LibreOffice drew back plain as day.
A document had one set for all of it, taken from whichever section
declared one last — so a fixture lost its letterhead entirely
and page 1 got the empty header its final section asked for.
A body block now carries `sectionBreak`, ordinal rather than indexed so
editing cannot desync it. Import resolves Word's "Link to Previous" per
reference type; export writes a set per sectPr, and on the ODF side each
section past the first gets its own master page, which the block switches
to. The layer picks a page's set from where pageBreaks reports the
sections starting, and each section's zone reaches ride
`--pb-section-reach` so a later section's letterhead makes room for
itself: page 10 of a fixture was 24.9mm out, now 1.1mm.
Editing still reaches section 1 only; the rest render read-only.
The cell padding was a constant in three places that disagreed with each
other, so a narrow column lost 0.38cm it did not have: a bibliography
marker column of 0.71cm wrapped "[2] " onto three lines and every entry
grew with it, costing a fixture a whole page.
The table now carries its own margins (w:tblCellMar, direct or from the
table style; fo:padding on the ODF cell style) and both exports write
them back. A side within a twentieth of a millimetre of the default is
the default, or Word's 108 twips would tag every table.
CSS only has the fixed tab-size grid, so a tab that resolves to one of the
paragraph's stops is measured and given the exact advance as an inline margin.
A hanging indent implies a stop at the text position, as in Word.
Steffen Becker