Re: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

newer
[opensuse] Up to date...

older
[opensuse] Ex disk problem

David C. Rankin

14 May 2011 14 May '11

17:50

On 04/27/2011 08:38 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Things like this keep me off, I refuse to let YaST update OOo to libre in my 11.2. :-(

For me, this office application is also crucial.

+1 What really blows my mind is how these "Flagship" applications get released to the entire Linux community, picked up by the major distros, and then distributed to all end users -- and -- Nobody has even tested this stuff??? You would think there is some default set of documents that would at least get printed before each release to make sure they print the same as they did in the last release. The complete lack of print/format testing of the office suites is just one example of what makes it impossible for business to rely on opensource for desktop use. The other is the realization that it can take the office suite devs over a year to address and fix these issues. All of this highlight areas where simple additions to the QA process prior to release and quick work to repair identified problems in critical areas can greatly advance viability of opensource as a business desktop alternative. As it sits now, the cost to business organizations of one of these type mess-ups is massive. Even at a bare minimum, if each business lost no more than 2 hours trying to figure out why in the heck they can't get the documents or labels to print right anymore plus the time required to troubleshoot to the point of discovering that there is a default spacing difference between OO and Libre, the cost across all businesses using opensource is staggering. Right now I have to keep both OO and Libre installed. OO for re-printing all the documents created over the past 10 years. And yes, it is a BIG deal when the Judge's signature block ends up on a different page or all the Page X, Paragraph Y references in a document are no longer correct. Here's to hoping the bug is identified and corrected swiftly :) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Show replies by date

Anton Aylward

14 May 14 May

18:16

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

David C. Rankin said the following on 05/14/2011 01:50 PM:

...

You would think there is some default set of documents that would at least get printed before each release to make sure they print the same as they did in the last release. The complete lack of print/format testing of the office suites is just one example of what makes it impossible for business to rely on opensource for desktop use. The other is the realization that it can take the office suite devs over a year to address and fix these issues.

Indeed. And Microsoft Word has been though that same issue. Different revisions printed archival documents differently. And you can't blame *all* of it on revised OS printer drivers and printer spec/PPD files. All I can say is that while you observe this (I don't on any of my documents but then mileages vary) with OOo/LOo this time, the poor Windows users have been though it many times. -- I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. Dwight D. Eisenhower -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

18:37

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

David C. Rankin wrote:

...

You would think there is some default set of documents that would at least get printed before each release to make sure they print the same as they did in the last release. The complete lack of print/format testing of the office suites is just one example of what makes it impossible for business to rely on opensource for desktop use.

I beg to differ - it might make it impossible for business to use one particular release, but that just means remaining on the previous one for a while longer. I switched my business 100% to e.g. openoffice about seven years ago, I have not had reason to regret it.

...

The other is the realization that it can take the office suite devs over a year to address and fix these issues.

Yeah ... but still better than the alternative.

...

As it sits now, the cost to business organizations of one of these type mess-ups is massive. Even at a bare minimum, if each business lost no more than 2 hours trying to figure out why in the heck they can't get the documents or labels to print right anymore plus the time required to troubleshoot to the point of discovering that there is a default spacing difference between OO and Libre, the cost across all businesses using opensource is staggering.

As is the cost of a 5minute coffee-break :-) -- Per Jessen, Zürich (11.5°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

David C. Rankin

15 May 15 May

17:14

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On 05/14/2011 01:37 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

As is the cost of a 5minute coffee-break :-)

Yes, but I LIKE MY COFFEE ;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer

16 May 16 May

06:43

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On Sat, 2011-05-14 at 12:50 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:

...

Right now I have to keep both OO and Libre installed. OO for re-printing all the documents created over the past 10 years. And yes, it is a BIG deal when the Judge's signature block ends up on a different page or all the Page X, Paragraph Y references in a document are no longer correct.

Surely you do proper linking of pages to these things? Then the page numbers are updated as things print. Having said that, I can agree about locations of things like images. I get Word docs all the time that contain images. They never render properly (screen or print). I am not talking little things. I just got a Word .docx file with scientific plots (jpegs) and when veiwed in OO or LO all the images were in Lilliput postage stamp sized boxes at the top of the first page. They should have been on various pages in locations with captions. These sort of things happen all the time. Our company has official Word templates for various doc types. I can seldom see things even close to correctly in OO/LO. A favorite is where everything prints on the first page, with the document content continuing in the 'box' on the first page well past what is viewable or printed. Of course, this could be a phenomena similar to old ME Explorer not rendering HTML properly and so sites made mods to get around that, thus breaking HTML correctness. Maybe the templates are the source of the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented. It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing. It would also become a repo of docs that have problems. Perhaps that could be leveraged into something that could help improve the situation? Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

09:30

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented.

I thought they were just that - were they not made into ISO standards? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (13.1°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Herbert Graeber

12:21

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Am 16.05.2011 11:30, schrieb Per Jessen:

...

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented. I thought they were just that - were they not made into ISO standards? What they standardized is not what their software uses...

Herbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Dave Howorth

10:43

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Herbert Graeber wrote:

...

Am 16.05.2011 11:30, schrieb Per Jessen:

...
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented. I thought they were just that - were they not made into ISO standards? What they standardized is not what their software uses...

and ISO standards aren't public :( unless you have money :) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer

11:27

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 14:21 +0200, Herbert Graeber wrote:

...

Am 16.05.2011 11:30, schrieb Per Jessen:

...
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented. I thought they were just that - were they not made into ISO standards? What they standardized is not what their software uses...

I do not think the older .doc format is an ISO standard. The newer XML format (.docx) is a based on a standard. But I bet there is lots of room for interpretation. And I bet many features are optional. The fact that there is a standard does not mean that MS are required to follow it. Even if they were a big part of making the standard. So, in the 'simple' case of anchoring images in text, MS Word could be using some optional and obscure part of the standard to control this. Did OO/LO interpret these parts of the standard the same way? Who is to say. In other ISO standards we use, there is often a description of test data that can be used to verify an implementation. At least this the case in many engineering standards. I wonder if there are test documents to see how well an application follows this document standard. Probably not. But if there were, it would be interesting to see how the various software implementations around the standard hold up. Sigh. Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

12:03

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 14:21 +0200, Herbert Graeber wrote:

...
Am 16.05.2011 11:30, schrieb Per Jessen:

...
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
the error. And, of course, MS file formats are not publicly documented. I thought they were just that - were they not made into ISO standards? What they standardized is not what their software uses...

I do not think the older .doc format is an ISO standard.

But wasn't Microsoft forced to make the document format for Office97 public? I've always thought that was the whole reason for openoffice to be able to deal with MS Office documents at all.

...

The newer XML format (.docx) is a based on a standard.

Right - I don't get a lot of MS docs, but I know I have started seeing more and more .docx and .xlsx formats in email.

...

But I bet there is lots of room for interpretation.

No doubt about that - I'm sure the standards describe the data formats, not how they should be rendered visually. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (13.9°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R.

12:10

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2011-05-16 13:27, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

I do not think the older .doc format is an ISO standard. The newer XML format (.docx) is a based on a standard.

That's right, the .doc format is not standard. The new .docx is. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk3RFCcACgkQtTMYHG2NR9X+4wCfW3LVYmeg37TwrLTnBuztIShj JGYAoJNLYFOUK+ctPGr6Ha5P0V42E+XX =SWKH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward

12:12

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 05/16/2011 02:43 AM:

...

Having said that, I can agree about locations of things like images. I get Word docs all the time that contain images. They never render properly (screen or print). I am not talking little things. I just got a Word .docx file with scientific plots (jpegs) and when veiwed in OO or LO all the images were in Lilliput postage stamp sized boxes at the top of the first page. They should have been on various pages in locations with captions. These sort of things happen all the time.

Yes, I see this a LOT with my clients. They go through this every time they upgrade MS-Office. Part of the reason is simply that different versions of MS-Word render things differently, but its complicated by user behaviour. Users seem to want the dancing-pigs over portability or clarity (or security) every time. There are some users who don't use style sheets and format everything the "hard way", not just using tabs and space but over-riding line spacing, character spacing and so on pretty much on a line-by-line basis. And yes, I've been guilty of this to get pages to fit 'just right' on resumes and trifold brochures. What we are really doing is using the word processor as a typesetter or layout engine. We should be using Inkscape or Pagemaker or Tex or more likely, Scribus. Scribus is GOOD! Once you start buqqering around with styles and fonts that aren't the same between releases (fonts get updated too!) thing look wild. And graphics! Just as with web pages, there are so many ways to do graphics in a word document ... I have documents that were written in Office-97 that don't render properly in Office-2000 or later; that still MICROSOFT. And that's PowerPoint as well as Word. People have sent me graphics in PowerPoint rather than the jpg or gif -- I can't understand why, it just bloats -- and the result isn't portable to any of the Windows machines I have access to; again an issue of revisions. This is one reason I send out documents as either plain text or as PDF-1.3. And I keep them SIMPLE. -- Anton J Aylward, CISSP, CISA System Integrity - http://www.SystemI.ca The InfoSec Blog - http://InfoSecBlog.AntonAylward.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Brian K. White

16:15

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On 5/16/2011 8:12 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

Users seem to want the dancing-pigs over portability or clarity (or security) every time.

Thank you for my (duly credited) facebook status. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Brian K. White

16:06

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On 5/16/2011 2:43 AM, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing. It would also become a repo of docs that have problems. Perhaps that could be leveraged into something that could help improve the situation?

That's a REALLY cool idea. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

16:08

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing.

If someone can point me to the current "perfect version of OO/LO", I can set that up fairly quickly. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (16.4°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Greg Freemyer

16:30

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing.

If someone can point me to the current "perfect version of OO/LO", I can set that up fairly quickly.

I think the request is just for a version that is properly (perfectly) built and installed and any bugs it has are real, not build / installation specific. If so, the version of LO that is currently in opensuse updates would be good. Then I assume it is the "Export as PDF" function of OO that would need to be automatically invoked on any uploaded file. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

16:40

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing.

If someone can point me to the current "perfect version of OO/LO", I can set that up fairly quickly.

I think the request is just for a version that is properly (perfectly) built and installed and any bugs it has are real, not build / installation specific.

If so, the version of LO that is currently in opensuse updates would be good. Then I assume it is the "Export as PDF" function of OO that would need to be automatically invoked on any uploaded file.

That is what I am thinking too, and I already have such a setup running. I'll see if I can put it up on a website with the latest LO. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (17.3°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

17:37

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Per Jessen wrote:

...

Greg Freemyer wrote:

...
On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
It would be great to have a web site running whatever is the perfect version of OO/LO where you could upload a doc and have it rendered to, say, PDF. This would let you see if any problems are a local install thing.

If someone can point me to the current "perfect version of OO/LO", I can set that up fairly quickly.

I think the request is just for a version that is properly (perfectly) built and installed and any bugs it has are real, not build / installation specific.

If so, the version of LO that is currently in opensuse updates would be good. Then I assume it is the "Export as PDF" function of OO that would need to be automatically invoked on any uploaded file.

That is what I am thinking too, and I already have such a setup running. I'll see if I can put it up on a website with the latest LO.

Before I go and spend some of my limited spare time setting this up, just a sanity-check - is there any real interest in such a service? Just a show of hands please. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (17.4°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer

17:51

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

On May 16, 2011, at 7:37 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Before I go and spend some of my limited spare time setting this up, just a sanity-check - is there any real interest in such a service? Just a show of hands please.

I would be happy to sort out local issues (read 'confirm as not local issues') via such a mechanism. The evolution of set of files with known issues would be good. I think that is a different task. All the "public access don't upload secret stuff" warnings must apply. The file would be deleted when done, I guess. In the future, uploading a file that demonstrates a problem might be useful. I always thought OO/LO would have such a mechanism. I know it can be difficult as one cannot perhaps say what it should look like. To do that, I guess the developers would need a copy of Word. But there is something missing in the feedback loop here. Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Kapellgränd 7 P.O. Box 4205 SE-102 65 Stockholm, Sweden Office: Int +46 8-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 And remember: It is RSofT and there is always something under construction. It is like talking about large city with all constructions finished. Not impossible, but very unlikely. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen

19:01

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

On May 16, 2011, at 7:37 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...
Before I go and spend some of my limited spare time setting this up, just a sanity-check - is there any real interest in such a service? Just a show of hands please.

I would be happy to sort out local issues (read 'confirm as not local issues') via such a mechanism.

The evolution of set of files with known issues would be good. I think that is a different task.

All the "public access don't upload secret stuff" warnings must apply. The file would be deleted when done, I guess.

The site would have a set of conditions that would unconditionally push back any and all liability to the user.

...

In the future, uploading a file that demonstrates a problem might be useful. I always thought OO/LO would have such a mechanism.

Well, that's essentially just pastebin functionality, isn't it? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (13.1°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Johannes Meixner

17 May 17 May

10:04

New subject: [opensuse] LibreOffice Spacing Bug causes Pre-defined Templates to print incorrectly

Hello, On May 14 12:50 David C. Rankin wrote (excerpt):

...

Nobody has even tested this stuff???

Where have _you_ been to test it? There is a longer beta (a.k.a. "milestone") phase for each openSUSE version where interested users can test it. When nobody is interested to test a particular functionality, then this functionality is not tested. The free software world works on a voluntary base. If you depend on a functionality, it is you who must test the particular functionality which you need, provide meaningful bug reports, answer questions, and so on... Alternatively one can sign an appropriate contract with a company which provides support and maintenance for business usage. One has to pay for value in either case: Either one must contribute on a voluntary base or one must pay money for a business solution. Kind Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH -- Maxfeldstrasse 5 -- 90409 Nuernberg -- Germany HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendoerffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

4734

Age (days ago)

4737

Last active (days ago)

List overview

Download

20 comments

10 participants

participants (10)

Anton Aylward
Brian K. White
Carlos E. R.
Dave Howorth
David C. Rankin
Greg Freemyer
Herbert Graeber
Johannes Meixner
Per Jessen
Roger Oberholtzer