Are footnotes are OLE objects?

English
#1

I have a complex .odt file (778 kb, no images, multiple languages and fonts, LTR + RTL, hundreds of footnotes), that LO7 can barely open, and then becomes unresponsive. I can open the file on my older computer running LO6. Both computers are running Linux Mint, however, the file has also been opened and edited on other Linux distros and began on LO5. It opens the first 430 pages instantly, and then gradually slows as it loads the rest, becoming unresponsive after loading the last page. There are 930 pages in the document.

I noted that LO is not using the available system memory, or swap. Opening the document from a system fresh restart results in 1.2 of 4 GB ram being used, and zero GB of swap.

I’ve read dozens of pages in the past 4 days, mostly out-of-date information about increasing memory usage in LO5. Apparently, the org.openoffice.Office.common → cache → writer settings replaced the memory settings, however, all I see there is a setting to alter the OLE_objects. I read the description of OLE objects, but it wasn’t clear if “footnotes” are OLE objects. Anyway, I incrementally changed the default 20 to 99999 (the max), and it doesn’t appear to have done anything.

Is there a setting I’m overlooking that will allow LO7 to use the available memory?
Thanks in advance.

#3

This kind of performance collapse can usually be traced back to formatting strategy. Do you practice styling or direct formatting?
I find strange that a 930-page document weighs only 778k bytes. Attach your document for further analysis. If you consider it private, send it to me through private mail. To access the PM service, click on my name.

#5

Thanks for the reply ajlittoz.

I don’t believe the problem is caused within LO, (I could be wrong of course.) I believe the system is simply not using the available memory for some reason. I suspect the problem is within the OS.

The document is 6x9 pages, not full size, and there is nothing but text and formatting. I cannot send a copy for legal reasons (just working on it, not the owner), but thanks for the offer.

To answer your other question, it mainly uses styles (just a few), however, there are hundreds of directly styled words using different fonts (a couple of dozen fonts are used). This is in the glossary, where terms in different languages are being explained. It is a complex file, but I doubt that is the problem.

I was able (an hour ago) to get the file to stop freezing after loading by removing a large ‘section’ in the middle of the file, which was being used to moved the endnotes to before the endmatter. I suspect that the problem was insufficient memory allocation to perform the task. When I looked into it further Linux Mint was only allocating ~260 MBs to it with the section there, which went up to ~350 MB after I removed the section. I think I’ll try it on Windows next.

If I’m overlooking something, please let me know.
Thanks again.

#6

Direct formatted words may contribute to the problem. Internally such “highlighted” words are converted to single-use anonymous character styles, one per occurrence. Consequently, you uselessly overload the style dictionary. It would be much better to abstract these highlights and design proper character styles. You likely won’t need more than 5 of them (even if you need 10, it is better than hundreds).

Endnotes location is another issue. Due to Writer hard-wiring the location at very end of document, using a section to move this location is the usual solution. But memory-wise, I don’t think it changes anything. Whether endnotes are at end of document or section, they need to be cached the same. So memory stress is the same.

#7

Thank you ajlittoz.

I noted that you’ve suggested before to others that styles be used to replace directly formatted text. Previously I assumed you meant for larger sections of text. After you asked about styles earlier, I started working on character styles as you subsequently suggested. My initial thought was that it’ll need a couple of dozen character styles, but I’m trying to find a way to reduce the number. It may take a while to reformat the file.

I appreciate the advice.

#8

Here’s a trick for reformatting using character styles, in case you didn’t already know that: you can search for a font name, and use Find all to select all text in the document with that font, then leave the dialog box. All words with the special font are now selected. Press Ctrl+M to remove the direct formatting (essential), and apply a character style to all selected items in one fell swoop. Of course, you must first define the character style.

#9

Wow. Thanks. I did not know that. I’ll look into it. It should save me a week of work!

#10

I just thought I’d update this.

I removed all direct formatting (100%), replaced by either styles (23 new) or unicode characters (for super/sub-script), and then attempted to reinsert the section, and Writer became unresponsive again.

I’ve replicated this in Windows 10 (originally found in Linux Mint), as well as LO 6 and LO 5 (last update for each). To be clear, I didn’t try everything in each LO version, just checked if I could insert the section. In LO 5 I also adjusted that old ‘memory’ setting that was removed, and as indicated when it was removed, it did not help with this issue.

The problem arises when I place the section around the content, and click “Footnotes → Collect at end of text”

If I don’t click it, there is no problem, but the footnotes remains where they are, either at the foot of the page, or at the end of the document, as defined in Tools → Footnotes and Endnotes.

Without the section, the document takes about a minute to load if the footnotes are at the bottom of the page, and ~15 seconds if the footnotes are at the end of the document.

If I try to add a section, even around just a few paragraphs, nothing happens to the document, other than becoming unresponsive, memory usage (for LO) jumps to 475 MB, and CPU usage to 1 CPU at 100%.

While switching the formatting to styles was on my ‘when I have time’ wishlist, it doesn’t seem to have solved the problem, although it did speed up load times of the document. I noticed this as I was editing, as I stopped repeatedly to edit and reload the fonts in order to reduce the number of styles used. Each time I reopened the document it loaded faster.

I’m wondering if there is a problem with the file itself, but I don’t know how to check this. I installed both OpenOffice and FreeOffice on my test computer because they load .odt files, and both opened it without the section, however neither seems to have proper unicode support, and so large sections of text could not be rendered. OpenOffice also because unresponsive when I attempted to add a section. I don’t know enough about them to know if this is normal or not, but could not change the font in either to make the text readable, and so I suspect they just don’t offer full unicode support like LibreOffice. I’d rather not buy a copy of MS Office just to see if the file will open correctly. Any suggestions on how to check the file integrity would be appreciated.

Next I’m going to manually covert the footnotes into endnotes, and see it that changes anything. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, as there are over 500 of them.

If anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate hearing them. Thanks.

#11

What you describe suggests some damage in the document structure. Has the document ever been edited by Word or created as .doc(x) before being converted to .odt? If so, create a fresh blank document into which you configure all your needed styles. Save it. Reopen it (or a copy) and paste a small part of your original document as unformatted text. Restyle everything. Add now your section. Dies the new document become unresponsive? If it work, add progressively more original contents (again as unformatted text to avoid importing damaged formatting).

#12

Thanks for the response ajlittoz.

Yes. I found out this document was not the original I worked on previously, but a recovered copy after some kind of hardware failure. I suspect the error came in during the failure or recovery process. I know the document can be rebuilt as you describe, but, quite frankly, its a lot of work I’m hoping to avoid.

Currently, I’m manually copying the footnotes into endnotes, leaving the styles in place, hoping I discover where the error lies if it’s in the footnotes themselves. So far 50 have been moved and are properly displaying at the end of the section with minimal reformatting required.

However, I suspect the error is not in the footnotes, but a corrupted odt file that deals with footnotes (example content.xml or settings.xml). I believed this because I attempted to just separate text containing the last four footnotes into a smaller section, with the notes set to display at the end of the section, however, they would only display at the foot of the pages. They were within the correct section, while the rest of the notes were set to load at the end of the document, but refused to move to the end of the section regardless of the settings I chose.

I am hoping that if I move the footnotes into endnotes and then copy the entire document into a new file, whatever the corrupted file was will be replaced.

Rebuilding the entire document would be a nuclear solution. It would have to work, but would take a lot of time.

Questions: Is there a way to copy and paste both the body and footnotes without styles? I tried something like this earlier and either the footnotes disappeared, or the styles copied with them.

Thanks again.

#13

Indeed if footnotes refuse to follow your location request, something is corrupted in the encoding.

Copying: footnotes are stored at the anchor point in the XML as a kind of “annotation”, i.e. something which doesn’t display in text flow but is interpreted by Writer, just like formatting directives. Therefore, pasting as unformatted text loses formatting (as expected) but also notes since they are not the main text flow. If you don’t paste unformatted, you also paste the damaged encoding.
So the solution may be to copy separately footnote text and paste it unformatted, then do the same with text. You need then to reinsert the note and also restyle everything.

I don’t see any other reliable solution. That’s why is is very very important to have a full style collection (including character, list and page styles) to minimise the pain.

#2

Footnotes definitely are not OLE objects. It is “ordinary” text attached to some anchor point. When laying out the document, this text is “detached” from the current line set aside to be shown at bottom of page.

Now your real question does not seem to be really about notes but about LO performance.

#4

Thanks ajlittoz.

Actually I just wanted to confirm that end/footnotes are not OLE objects, because then there really are no settings to tell LO7 to use more memory. There are no graphics. I can investigate it further on the Mint Linux side, or try a different distro.

#14

I found my hanging up problem to be LanguageTool. It was opening a hidden window behind the LO window. Until that window was closed LO stopped.
I disabled LanguageTool, and everything has worked fine.

#15

Thanks BSammons. That wasn’t the issue, but you did remind me that the previous computers did have the Language Tools set differently. When I turned of the spell check and related tools, the system did run a bit faster. Thanks again.

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