Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 74295
[RFE] File | Open default to type "All Documents" instead of "All Files (*.*)"
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:39:42 UTC
File | Open defaults to File Types "All files (*.*)". This allows a novice user to click on a document type that OOo does not support, such as PDF, and get a confusing error message. The suggested fix is to have File Open default to "All documents", which means any document type that OOo recognizes, rather than *.*. Alternatively, or additionally, when the user attempts to open an unsupported document type, OOo could ask if the user wants to open it in the default application, so for example, .pdf files would then be opened using Acrobat Reader. FYI, there are several related enhancement suggestions: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=10048 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=19918 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=67163 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=70421
TM -> requirements: please have a look.
Confirming the request.
Pulsifer: please, write a good spec and cover all bad sides if you're willing this request to be implemented. Take a look at this one: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc/Drafts/Issue_33851
Can do. Are there any specs or any documentation that describe how the various file formats are detected--not the API, but what specifically is used to decide if a document is in OpenDocument text format, Microsoft Word format, text format, etc.? Also, when I try to open a .pdf document in OOo v2.1, I get a dialog box titled "ASCII Filter Options" with fields for Character set, Default fonts, language and the Paragraph break marker. Is there a specification that describes when this dialog is displayed? Thank you.
Draft specification at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File_Chooser_Type_Handling_Specification
That dialog is displayed when you try to open an encoded file. Files with strange symbols are treated as encoded. Well... non-text files when treated as text files are simple text files with strange symbols ;).
Which begs the question, why would OOo decide that a PDF or any other type of file is an encoded text file? This is likely to be a wrong decision. Its possible that any file, including a binary file, could be treated as an encoded text file. In the spec I tried to deal with this situation explicitly. See Paragraph B of "When 'All Files' is selected". This paragraph essentially states that unless the file has a presumptive text type extension such as .txt or .log, then before attempting to open it as a text file, OOo should first ask the user if they would like to treat it as a text file.
There might be a lot of other or custom extensions, as err, diff, patch or a lot of programming language file extensions. Such a list is not feasible.
If you refer to the draft spec, what you will see is that there is a list of extension that will open as text without asking the user if he/she wants to open the file as text. These extensions include .txt, .log., and anything else. For files with extension not on the list, the spec states that OOo will first ask the user if he/she wants to open the file as a text file. This is a simple dialog box, with two choices, OK or Cancel. Obviously, it is more than feasible to come up with a list of extension for which OOo will not first ask the user. If there were no extensions on the list, it would still be very usable. Putting on extension on the "white list" just makes it easier for the user, but it not required. Also note that this only applies if the File Type selection is "All Files (*.*)" and OOo decides that the specific file the user wants to open might be a text file. If the selection is "Text (*.txt)" or "Text Encoded (*.txt)", then OOo will never ask if the user wants to treat the file as a text file.
Here's a report at OOoForum from a user that ran into this problem: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=209477