AutoFit seems broken in LO 25.8 compare to previous version 7.x

Hi All,

We are facing lot of issues during upgrade with AutoFit in header and footer, and seems like we are experiencing similar bug 166978 – Upon opening an odt, there are large blank spaces that are forcing content to go onto a new page. We have noticed that Headers/Footers being Autofit have been a large proponent of this, but not the full cause.

We would like to start fixing bug on our own, any direction where can I look at first to see why 7.2 LO is working fine compare to what has changed in LO 25.8 related to Autofit.

As soon we save document or sometime just click in document, document gets corrected but we cant touch every form we have during upgrade.

Please suggest

Thanks
Abhi

https://bibisect.libreoffice.org/

I had a look at tdf#166978 attachments. They are very badly designed (if at all). They mix objects which don’t interact. For example, the header contains frames and a table. Frames and tables can’t be automatically adjusted with wrap properties. A frame can eventually constraint text to be flushed but has no effect on a table. The table itself has been created only to draw a line at bottom of header. This can (and should) be done in the page style configuration.

Author tried to fix the issue by inserting several empty paragraphs to force header height. Once again, this should have been done in the page style configuration (giving a fixed size to the header).

Even the frames are a bad idea. A correctly designed table in the header would have replaced both frames with a more controllable object.

Another flaw is to use Heading n styles in frames and, more seriously, in headers. If a TOC is ever generated, data will be faulty.


The text itself is made of a single-column table. 1-column tables are complete nonsense in the majority of cases. A style with appropriate indents would have been better (and it can also have borders if needed to imitate a table.
To end with the analysis, the attachments suffer from chronic direct formatting.
Before trying to fix an possible unexpected behaviour, the documents should be redesigned in a proper way without trying to resort to advanced unmastered features. As always, the simpler the document, the easier to tune and maintain.

@abhishah4444: if your document is as unstructured as those in tdf#166978, it could be wise to review it to isolate what is due to its state and what is due to Writer. Attach a sample file if you’d like an analysis.

@ajlittoz Thanks for your valuable input.

Our struggle is, as we have lot of forms in 1000s, We are not sure if we can work individually on forms as part of upgrade to 25.8.

From user’s standpoint they open fine in 7.2.x and they feel its new version of LO which is making it break so it falls on us to fix.

Can you suggest direction of huge LO code base where should I look first in code if we have to make it work in 25.8. Majority of our forms have different kind of headers and all gets fixed with autofit removed and given fixed height but approach is unfeasible as we have to deal with lot of forms.

Please suggest from technical standpoint if this is fixable at code level, we hope this gets identified as bug so official fix is also available.

Thanks
Abhi

Before suggesting anything, I’d like to look at an example of your documents. Please attach one. If you consider them as sensitive, send through private mail.

@abhishah4444

  1. This is definitely a bug.
  2. You show a great attitude, even trying to fix it yourself.
  3. However, you ignored my link, which points to the most essential tool in identifying the specific change that actually caused the regression. And you already ask for code pointers in a very difficult area of Writer layout, without identifying the problematic change first. Bibisect it, before doing anything else.

Thanks @mikekaganski I will take your recommendation as step 1 action item.

@ajlittoz Our forms are similar I checked what’s in bug so we are hoping that if LO fix it then we are covered but we are afraid that LO team might just ask to rebuild form, that’s why we want to fix ourselves.

What is in bug attachments is at best clumsy, at worst amateurish garbage. Send me privately one of your forms (with clear design goals) so that I can try and see if there is a rock-solid workaround.

Everybody seems focused on AutoFit but in the case of bug attachments it won’t work because Autofit feature basic requirements are not satisfied (hence an attempted fix leading to further attempted fix ending in a mess).

Writer is feature-rich but it is mandatory to understand the context of use. It looks to me that bug author requests Writer to handle a badly structured document in order to avoid a clean redesign. As I mentioned mixing frames and tables is doomed to fail because they are alien to each other (living in their own workspace without possibility to interact).

There may be a bug but, first, the design is faulty.