Questions about LO in the AOO forum

[CannedMan]

I have been a member of this forum for quite some time. I first started using the software back in the StarOffice days, getting it bundled on a CD of some computer mag, which made me switch from MS Works. (Wow, that seems like ages ago …!) Being a typophile, I recently switched from AOO to LO, for the simple reason that I can get full access to OpenType features, such as ligatures, discretionary ligatures, true super- and subscripts, as well as true small caps, and much else. I love it! However, there are of course things I wonder about, problems arising, possible bugs and so on, that I would need to ask for help to solve. I have already done this on a couple of occasions.

My question then, is, what does the forum – in which I have found helpful, polite people with whom I have interacted on and off for years – think about getting LibreOffice questions? Having read through the sticky post about the potential death of AOO, I see there seems to be a slight, though not very strong, divide, between those who want a remerging of the projects again, and those who’d prefer it stays separate. I do not wish to offend anyone, and I feel this is something that deserves a poll discussion. If this has been discussed and I have missed it, I do apologise.

[John_Ha]

See How should this web site best support LibreOffice and others in Site Feedback for a discussion.

Apache offered to host this forum for all forks of OpenOffice.

The AOO and LO forks will never get back together. They will continue on their separate ways not least because AOO and LO have different licence agreements meaning code from LO cannot be used in AOO.

[Hagar Delest]

Apache offered to host this forum for all forks of OpenOffice.

Well, I would not put it that way.
It's more a de facto situation. At the beginning (OOo), it was our decision (as Volunteers) because this forum was set up to continue the good work from the openofficeforum we all started in. It was clearly dedicated to all derivatives since the code was still the same (before the LO fork). After that first forum died as we had anticipated, we kept that spirit (helping the derivatives) and when this forum was created (discussions with the Apache people), it was clearly stated that our philosophy was to keep a kind of "independence" and that we would not become focused on AOO only.

Thus, I would say the support for derivatives is more a "tolerance" (no better wording right now but "tolerance" a bit overrated in this context).

As for the initial question, everything has been said in the other topic linked above.

[Lupp]

@John_Ha
I'm trying to be law-abiding basically, but I would strictly decline a trend to expect everybody to study all kinds of law, and to think like lawyers based on that intention. Civil law needs to be implemented to human society as a service, not as a power or a ruler of its own right. It can not be allowed to block necessary development definitely and finally. Believing in the hypothesis that there is not yet reached a point of no return (without a revolution), I feel sure that there must be a way - legal, convenient, and pragmatic at the same time - to (e.g.) merge two branches of differently licensed members of a software family if obviously required.

For all my professional life I was obliged to know and to apply legal norms - and their frequent changes.
Nonetheless I used thousands of hours of creative work to produce textual materials (and some bits of software) much of which was published, originally to a limited number of people, but passed-on subsequently. Not a single page was put under a restrictive copyright and a relevant deal of it was reused by others. If there was any restriction it was concerning texts being confidential or classified.

If it's on behalf of the document foundation to provide LibO code under a less restrictive license they should do. If Apache (and/or their predecessors) made an uncorrectable mistake choosing the license they should close down. Or might someone explain to me for what reason two different ways of licensing "the same" bunch of code (with some different changes) under different licenses should be desirable if it induces more and more issues - concerning the user community and their forums eg? Desirable in the view of people interested to use and to keep alive free software. It's clearly desirable in the view of commercial competitors, of course.

@CannedMan: I'm slighly doubting if general-purpose office software is or should be made the perfect tool for "typophiles". Old style bookface may probably need to move to some kind of museum - as many anthropoligcal specialties do, unavoidably. If that "museum" needs some software for its purposes it might better be developed under conditions minimising the conflicts with everyday needs. I wouldn't deny a distinct feeling of envy if I look at the rather poor development concerning the formula editor where some issues are aesthetic and at least "somehow" functional at the same time.

Concerning my vote: As any vote I ever casted, my choice (first option) is "cum grano salis". (Words from the museum?)

[John_Ha]

I think the toothpaste is out of the tube and it will not be easy putting it back!

[Lupp]

...and do the other things, not because they are easy, but and also not because they are hard...

but because they need be done.
You may know whose address I hijacked here.

[Villeroy]

Both programs save the same Open Document Format.
Both programs claim to be reference implementations for ODF.
Both applications are almost identical.

LibreOffice has defined a new style family for text tables which corresponds to the auto-format feature for text tables.
LO has a new source descriptor for charts from pivot tables which is very nice if you use pivots.
LO developers are in the process of replacing embedded HSQL databases with embedded Firebird.
The rest is about foreign file formats I don't need and menues, buttons, dialogs I have a hard time getting used to.
I'm sure LO has many more additional featues compared to AOO but they can''t develop far beyond ODF. Producing ODF that is readable by LO only would foil the purpose why both suites exist.

[John_Ha]

I'm sure LO has many more additional featues compared to AOO but they can''t develop far beyond ODF.

I did some testing with Microsoft Textboxes. See the attached .odt file which has a Microsoft Textbox inserted by Insert > Textbox ..., in LO.

LO saves the file as a .docx with the <mc:AlternateContent> <mc:Choice Requires="wps"> <w:drawing> tags - ie it is outside the OOXML standard.

LO saves the file as a .odt file using (what looks to me to be) standard ODF tags.

When I open the file with AOO I see the "Textbox" and its contents. I cannot add anything with AOO which is the same as the "Textbox" - adding a Draw rectangle with text in it or a Frame with text in it gives different coding in content.xml.

This is the XML from the uploaded file:

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<office:document-content xmlns:office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0" xmlns:style="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:style:1.0" xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0" xmlns:table="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0" xmlns:draw="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:drawing:1.0" xmlns:fo="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:xsl-fo-compatible:1.0" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:meta="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:meta:1.0" xmlns:number="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:datastyle:1.0" xmlns:svg="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:svg-compatible:1.0" xmlns:chart="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:chart:1.0" xmlns:dr3d="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:dr3d:1.0" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:form:1.0" xmlns:script="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:script:1.0" xmlns:ooo="http://openoffice.org/2004/office" xmlns:ooow="http://openoffice.org/2004/writer" xmlns:oooc="http://openoffice.org/2004/calc" xmlns:dom="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" xmlns:xforms="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:rpt="http://openoffice.org/2005/report" xmlns:of="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:of:1.2" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:grddl="http://www.w3.org/2003/g/data-view#" xmlns:tableooo="http://openoffice.org/2009/table" xmlns:textooo="http://openoffice.org/2013/office" xmlns:field="urn:openoffice:names:experimental:ooo-ms-interop:xmlns:field:1.0" xmlns:loext="urn:org:documentfoundation:names:experimental:office:xmlns:loext:1.0">
   <office:scripts/>
   <office:font-face-decls>
      <style:font-face style:name="Mangal1" svg:font-family="Mangal"/>
      <style:font-face style:name="Liberation Serif" svg:font-family="&apos;Liberation Serif&apos;" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
      <style:font-face style:name="Liberation Sans" svg:font-family="&apos;Liberation Sans&apos;" style:font-family-generic="swiss" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
      <style:font-face style:name="Mangal" svg:font-family="Mangal" style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
      <style:font-face style:name="Microsoft YaHei" svg:font-family="&apos;Microsoft YaHei&apos;" style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
      <style:font-face style:name="SimSun" svg:font-family="SimSun" style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
   </office:font-face-decls>
   <office:automatic-styles>
      <style:style style:name="P1" style:family="paragraph">
         <style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align="center"/>
      </style:style>
      <style:style style:name="fr1" style:family="graphic" style:parent-style-name="Frame">
         <style:graphic-properties style:vertical-pos="top" style:vertical-rel="paragraph-content" style:horizontal-pos="center" style:horizontal-rel="paragraph"/>
      </style:style>
      <style:style style:name="gr1" style:family="graphic">
         <style:graphic-properties draw:stroke="none" svg:stroke-color="#000000" draw:fill="none" draw:fill-color="#ffffff" fo:min-height="22.49mm" style:run-through="foreground" style:wrap="run-through" style:number-wrapped-paragraphs="no-limit" style:vertical-pos="from-top" style:vertical-rel="paragraph" style:horizontal-pos="from-left" style:horizontal-rel="paragraph" draw:wrap-influence-on-position="once-concurrent" style:flow-with-text="false"/>
      </style:style>
      <style:style style:name="gr2" style:family="graphic">
         <style:graphic-properties draw:fill="none" draw:textarea-horizontal-align="center" draw:textarea-vertical-align="middle" style:run-through="foreground" style:wrap="run-through" style:number-wrapped-paragraphs="no-limit" style:vertical-pos="from-top" style:vertical-rel="paragraph" style:horizontal-pos="from-left" style:horizontal-rel="paragraph" draw:wrap-influence-on-position="once-concurrent" style:flow-with-text="false"/>
      </style:style>
   </office:automatic-styles>
   <office:body>
      <office:text>
         <text:sequence-decls>
            <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/>
            <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/>
            <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/>
            <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/>
         </text:sequence-decls>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard">Some text</text:p>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard">
            <draw:frame text:anchor-type="paragraph" draw:z-index="0" draw:name="Shape1" draw:style-name="gr1" svg:width="168.28mm" svg:height="22.5mm" svg:x="0.72mm" svg:y="4.41mm">
               <draw:text-box>
                  <text:p>Some text in a Libre Office / Microsoft Textbox</text:p>
               </draw:text-box>
            </draw:frame>
         </text:p>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard">More text</text:p>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard">
            <draw:rect text:anchor-type="paragraph" draw:z-index="1" draw:style-name="gr2" draw:text-style-name="P1" svg:width="151.08mm" svg:height="52.13mm" svg:x="11.52mm" svg:y="5.64mm">
               <text:p text:style-name="P1">text in an AOO Draw textbox</text:p>
            </draw:rect>
         </text:p>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
         <text:p text:style-name="Standard">
            <draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame1" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="84.53mm" svg:height="24.5mm" draw:z-index="2">
               <draw:text-box>
                  <text:p text:style-name="Frame_20_contents">text in an AOO frame</text:p>
               </draw:text-box>
            </draw:frame>
         </text:p>
      </office:text>
   </office:body>
</office:document-content>