Problem with mirror margins on different page sections

[Michael]

I am generating a DOCX document from a template that requires several landscape pages interleaved with portrait pages.

When I first tried to insert a single landscape page after several portrait pages and then switch back to portrait orientation, I encountered two issues:

- the mirrored margins are lost after the orientation changes,
- the vertical text inside the textbox located in the side header is not vertically centered on the page.

On the other hand, the tables and text in the top and bottom headers are correctly stretched and adjusted when the page orientation changes to landscape.

To create a single landscape page, I currently do the following:

1. In the last paragraph before the landscape page, I add a Portrait section.
2. I then add the content that should appear on the landscape page.
3. After that, I insert an empty paragraph with a Landscape section.
4. Finally, at the end of the document, there is Portrait section, which correctly switches all subsequent pages back to portrait orientation.

Each time I create a new section (the Portrait section before the landscape page and the Landscape section after it), I execute the following code:

Code: Select all

newSection.getInternalType().getEGHdrFtrReferences().addAll(
    existingSection.getInternalType().getEGHdrFtrReferences()
);

where existingSection is the section retrieved from the template for the preceding portrait pages.

Additionaly, the loss of mirrored margins affects all pages preceding the landscape page, up to the first page of document that has its own section. All pages following the landscape page, from that point to the end of the document, retain the correct mirrored margins.

Would any additional information be required to help diagnose this issue? For example, would it be helpful if I shared the relevant XML or a code snippet showing how the section properties are generated?

[jason]

Hi Michael,

Mirror margins is a document-level setting, not a section one.

w:mirrorMargins is a child of w:settings (ie settings.xml), so it is on or off for the whole document. What varies per section is w:pgMar: when mirroring is on, w:left is the inside margin and w:right the outside one, plus w:gutter.

(One more thing to check while you are in settings.xml: mirrored documents usually also set w:evenAndOddHeaders, and then each section needs both the even and odd header references, not just one.)

So "the mirrored margins are lost" is almost certainly not the flag being cleared; it is that the sectPr you inserted carries different w:pgMar values from the ones in your template, so Word lays those pages out symmetrically.

Don't build the new sections from scratch — copy the one you are continuing, and change only the orientation:

Syntax: [ Download ] [ Hide ]

Syntax: [ Download ] [ Show ]

Using java Syntax Highlighting

SectPr existing = ...;   // the sectPr governing the portrait pages in your template

// for the landscape page
SectPr landscape = XmlUtils.deepCopy(existing);
SectPr.PgSz pgSz = landscape.getPgSz();
BigInteger w = pgSz.getW();
pgSz.setW(pgSz.getH());
pgSz.setH(w);
pgSz.setOrient(STPageOrientation.LANDSCAPE);
// Word won't swap the margins for you; if you want the same physical margins,
// swap top/bottom with left/right in landscape.getPgMar()

// and to go back to portrait afterwards, a straight copy
SectPr portrait = XmlUtils.deepCopy(existing);
 

Parsed in 0.015 seconds, using GeSHi 1.0.8.4

The copy brings w:pgMar (so your inside/outside margins survive), w:gutter, the header/footer references, w:titlePg, w:cols and w:docGrid with it. You can then drop the getEGHdrFtrReferences() copying you are doing.

The textbox is a separate problem. If its anchor is positioned with an absolute offset it can't stay centred when the page dimensions change; <wp:positionV relativeFrom="page"><wp:align>center</wp:align></wp:positionV> will. Post the drawing XML for it and I'll take a look.

cheers .. Jason

[Michael]

Thank you for the explanation. I applied the code using XmlUtils.deepCopy(), and the mirrored margins on the portrait pages are now correct. However, a new problem appeared: the table that should be displayed on the landscape page is now completely broken. The table title is rendered in the footer, and each table row is placed on a separate page at the top.

Could there be something wrong with the section layout in my document?

I am generating the document from a template that contains two sections:

- a dedicated section for the first page, and
- a final section in the document body.

When creating the additional Portrait section before the landscape page and the Landscape section after it, I always copy the final body section.

After that the document contains the following sections:

1. Initial section (<w:p> on the first page):

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="even" r:id="rId8"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId9"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="even" r:id="rId10"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId11"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId12"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId13"/>
    <w:type w:val="continuous"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="11906" w:h="16838" w:code="9"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="851" w:right="1134" w:bottom="851" w:left="284" w:header="709" w:footer="567" w:gutter="1134"/>
    <w:cols w:space="708"/>
    <w:titlePg/>
    <w:docGrid w:linePitch="360"/>
</w:sectPr>

2. Added Portrait section (<w:p> containing an empty <w:t>) before the landscape page, copied from the final body section:

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId14"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId15"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId16"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="11906" w:h="16838" w:orient="portrait" w:code="9"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="851" w:right="1134" w:bottom="851" w:left="284" w:header="709" w:footer="567" w:gutter="1134"/>
    <w:cols w:space="708"/>
    <w:titlePg/>
    <w:docGrid w:linePitch="326"/>
</w:sectPr>

3. Added Landscape section (<w:p> containing an empty <w:t>) after the landscape page, also copied from the final body section:

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId14"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId15"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId16"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="16838" w:h="11906" w:orient="landscape" w:code="9"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="851" w:right="1134" w:bottom="851" w:left="284" w:header="709" w:footer="567" w:gutter="1134"/>
    <w:cols w:space="708"/>
    <w:titlePg/>
    <w:docGrid w:linePitch="326"/>
</w:sectPr>

4. Existing Portrait section in the document body, which I use as the template for the added sections:

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId14"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId15"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId16"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="11906" w:h="16838" w:code="9"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="851" w:right="1134" w:bottom="851" w:left="284" w:header="709" w:footer="567" w:gutter="1134"/>
    <w:cols w:space="708"/>
    <w:titlePg/>
    <w:docGrid w:linePitch="326"/>
</w:sectPr>

For comparison, before I started using XmlUtils.deepCopy(), the added sections looked like this:

Portrait section:

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId14"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId15"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId16"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="11906" w:h="16838" w:orient="portrait"/>
</w:sectPr>

Landscape section:

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<w:sectPr ...>
    <w:headerReference w:type="default" r:id="rId14"/>
    <w:headerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId15"/>
    <w:footerReference w:type="first" r:id="rId16"/>
    <w:pgSz w:w="16838" w:h="11906" w:orient="landscape"/>
</w:sectPr>

With this version, the table on the landscape page was generated correctly. However, all portrait pages preceding the landscape page lost their mirrored margins. In other words, using XmlUtils.deepCopy() fixes the mirrored margins but breaks the table layout, whereas without XmlUtils.deepCopy() the table is rendered correctly but the mirrored margins are lost.