watermark feature

[eanokian]

Hey David,

I was wondering if you have revisited the watermark feature implementation to be incorporated in officer.
There is an old issue from 2018: #111 where the user was facing a similar situation I'm facing right now. I am aware of the complexity of this problem. For now, I implemented a workaround, where:

1. I open a template file which already contains a static watermark
2. I add a flextable on top
3. I set the shading of the flextable to "transparent" by manipulating the XML of the docx object before being exported.

Some of the limitations of this workaround are:

• the watermark is static, i.e. inherited from the template, so no way to set the string using R code, as the watermark string belongs to the header.xml, which I understand we cannot manipulate.
• if I want to insert a png, it covers the watermark. Changing the background transparency or the z-index of the image is quite unlikely to be trivial.

Just wanted to know if you have made any progress in this topic.

Thanks again for your work!

[ischmidt20]

I have a similar problem. For my application, I generate two copies of the template—one with watermark, one without—and then my code determines which template to use based on other conditions. I don't use images so can't speak to whether they would work or not. But would be nice to have watermark functionality handled directly in officer so I don't have to maintain two copies of the same template (in addition to the ability to change the watermark text itself)