Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 90592
figure paste into frame fails at top of page
Last modified: 2017-05-20 11:17:48 UTC
Pasting a figure into a frame works if the frame is in the middle of the page. But if the frame happens to fall at the top of the single text column on a page, then pasting the figure into the frame instead somehow plasters the figure onto every page of the document rather than into just that one frame. How to demonstrate: First demonstrate how the paste operation is expected to work. Open two documents at the same time: one, a Writer document containing multiple pages, and the other, a Draw document. Make some simple figure in the Draw document, with various boxes and arrows. Now back in the Writer document, go to the second page in the document, and after some initial text on that second page, create a new frame, one that lies somewhere in the middle of the page. Make it 6"x0.2", with autosized height, as you create it. Once it's on the page, click elsewhere in the page to deselect it. Go back to the Draw document, type Ctrl-A to select everything in your simple figure, then Ctrl-C to copy it. Go back to the Writer document and click the text cursor in the frame you just created. Now type Ctrl-V to paste the figure there. The figure will end up in the middle of that page, as you would expect. Now to demonstrate the failure, follow the same procedure, but this time, put enough text on the page and select the position of the new frame within that text such that the frame cannot fit on that page and instead ends up at the top of the following page. Now go through the same copy/paste procedure. What you will find is that the figure ends up not just on the page where you pasted it, but on every other page of the document! It is nearly impossible to figure out a workaround, as there is no obvious clue as to why the failed paste does not work as expected. Only a lot of stumbling around and experimenting finally yields an understanding of the boundaries of the bug. That makes it very difficult for most users to accept Writer as a workable product, if figure inclusion is a common part of their documents.
I am not able to reproduce the problem from the scratch using my test documents. Could you please attach your Writer and Draw document to this issue, so that I can see the issue here? BTW: Windows or Linux? If Linux, downloaded from OO.org or the default package of your distribution?
I am attaching to this bug report text.odt and diagram.odg files that demonstrate the problem. Exact procedure to reproduce the problem: soffice text.odt & (wait for doc to open) (flip back to terminal window) soffice diagram.odg & (wait for doc to open) (flip back to text window) scroll down to bottom of page 4 put text cursor at end of last paragraph on page 4 press Return Insert -> Frame set frame width to 6.5" OK (new frame should now appear at the top of page 5) click the mouse inside the 2nd or 3rd text paragraph on page 5, to deselect the frame flip back to diagram window Ctrl-A wait for the corner handles to show up Ctrl-C flip back to text window click the mouse inside the new frame Ctrl-V At this point, the diagram will appear on all pages, not just on the page containing the frame. You can execute the above but insert the frame in the middle of page 4. In that case, the diagram only appears on page 4, as expected. To create and test with these files, I used StarOffice 8 Update 10 under OpenSolaris. But I'm pretty sure I've seen the same bug before with the OO.org package downloaded onto a Linux box (I don't have it here with me to re-test in that environment right now).
Created attachment 54486 [details] text file to demonstrate bug 90592
Created attachment 54487 [details] diagram file to demonstrate bug 90592
Well I think we have here a combination of coincidences which make this issue a rarity: - the frame is stuck at the top of the page - there is only one paragraph in the frame. Due to this, the picture anchor jumps from the frame into the *header* (that's why it is repeated). The workaround: - add a second paragraph in the frame and paste there or - after having pasted in the header, cut the picture again and re paste it into the frame. @eponymousalias: considering this very special case and the easy way to workaround it, would you agree to close this issue as WONTFIX?
I'm not at all happy with a WONTFIX resolution, partly because I don't think this bug is all that rare (I have run into it several times over several documents), and partly because even if there is a workaround, there is no good way for an ordinary user to quickly discover that workaround. Even I, who was willing to put a bunch of time into discovering my own workaround and filing this bug report, have spent hours on this one issue. Anyone else is likely to give up and abandon the product as unusable. If you did mark it as WONTFIX, would you also include a description of the problem and the workaround in the product's Help, in some place that a user experiencing this issue is likely to find in their first search of the Help material? My guess is that you weren't thinking of doing so, which means the suggestion is essentially to bury/deny the problem. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but that just doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'm also guessing that with a repeatable test case now in hand, the person responsible-for/knowledgable-about that particular code could quickly isolate and fix the coding bug.
@OD: PLease have a look.
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".