Expanded rendering support
Watermarks, footnotes, and the details that make imported documents look right.
Open a legal contract with a "CONFIDENTIAL" watermark and 40 footnotes. Both render exactly as the author intended.
The problem
DOCX files carry formatting that most web editors ignore. Watermarks live inside VML shape elements buried in document headers, using legacy markup with hex-encoded brightness values. Footnotes are structurally separate from body text — the body has a tiny reference marker, the actual content lives in word/footnotes.xml.
Your users don't know or care about any of that. They open a document and expect it to look right. When the watermark disappears or the footnotes show up inline instead of at the bottom of the page, they blame your app.
Watermarks
Image watermarks
Company logos, "CONFIDENTIAL" stamps, and draft overlays stored as images now render behind the document content. SuperDoc parses VML attributes for positioning, opacity, and brightness — including the gain and blacklevel values that control the washed-out appearance Word applies to watermark images.
The watermark appears on every page, positioned exactly as the original author set it.
Text watermarks
Diagonal text like "DRAFT", "CONFIDENTIAL", or "DO NOT COPY" is converted to inline SVGs during import. The renderer handles rotation (typically 315 degrees), fill color, opacity, font family, and stroke properties.
Footnotes
Page-bottom rendering
Footnotes render at the bottom of the page that contains their reference, separated by a horizontal rule. Superscript numbering is automatic — the reference in the body and the number at the start of the footnote stay in sync.
Multi-column support
In multi-column layouts, footnotes appear in the correct column. If a reference is in the left column, the footnote renders at the bottom of the left column — not the right one, and not spanning the full page width.
Large footnote splitting
When a footnote is too long to fit on the remaining page space, it splits across pages. The first part fills the available space; the rest continues at the bottom of the next page with a continuation separator.
Multi-pass layout
Adding a footnote reserve reduces space for body content, which can push other footnote references to the next page. The layout engine handles this with a multi-pass loop (up to 4 passes), with oscillation detection to prevent infinite loops. Footnotes always land on the correct page.
Round-trip fidelity
Both features survive the full cycle: import from DOCX, render in the editor, export back to DOCX. Watermark VML attributes, footnote separators, continuation separators, and w:footnotePr properties are all preserved. What you import is what you export.
Get started
No configuration needed. Load any DOCX with watermarks or footnotes and they render automatically.