Lines get moved to the corners of the pages after saving as

[mmoole]

Hello,

i discovered that it seems that when i just saved my thesis under a new filename, the lines and arrows that i had drawn where all moved to the top corners of the pages. Originally, they all were in a frame with the accompanying images.
I can reproduce this, but not with another document, but i can give information about the environment.
* before opening in neooffice 3, the document was edited on portable ooo on wind xp
* opening this file everything is correct, although it takes some time because ts about 150 pages (but all images etc. are linked)
* "save as" giving the file a new name seemed to create the problem. i did not update indexes, fields etc. before doing that.
* opening the newly saved file in openoffice shows the lines etc displaced, but only on the pages that where not displayed when saving the file. that's mysterious.

well, it's not a big bummer because i can just make a copy of the file in finder and work with that (i mostly do this), but i just wanted to mention it.

greetings
m

[narf]

We are interested in reproducing this issue so we can investigate further and I have a couple of questions for you.

What file format is the original file? In other words what is the extension on the file, .odt, .doc, .docx or something else? When you saved the file did you change the format it was saved under? If so, what was it changed to.

--fran

[mmoole]

hello,

its the same, .odt file, i edit on ooo or neooffice. For saving as, i only change the number which consist of the first 3 characters of the file name.
and its ooo 3.0.1 portable on windows, on mac the latest neooffice version.
sadly i cannot send you the file, it is quite confidential... and i have not yet time to try it with a new file.

greetings
m

[narf]

I am trying to determine whether this occurs only in NeoOffice only. Do you get the same results when the file saved with a different name using OpenOffice.org 3.0.1?

--fran

[mmoole]

hello,

i tried it on ooo on my mac, and it seems that it is not moving my lines and arrows.
But: a kind of symptom i saw is: when loading the file (lets say no. 96, edited on ooo windows) in neooffice AND ooo (mac) (win i dont know), sometimes it mixes up page styles: the pages that i view for testing have sometimes the wrong style which is used some pages before, but then there is a page break back to the default style. This does happen while viewing the document and is not present right at opening.
When doing "update all", then everything looks good.

ooo (mac) seems to not move the lines away after doing update all and then saving as. But: when closing this file in order to open it again, ooo crashes, it also crashes when restarted. When opening the newly saved file with neooffice, everything looks fine.

Well, this is getting weird...
i would say its my document.... i am working on it since some months, and maybe something got mixed up.... but as long as my backups are recoverable, everything is ok

greetings
m

[narf]

[jdp]

I've also seen this 'arrows bunching in corners' with .odt saved to .odt on Mac NeoOffice - and no file name change (just a normal save). It doesn't happen frequently (maybe a dozen times in 3+ years) but I can't discern any pattern. (Not much help there, sorry) Restoring the page from backups has been the fix.

[pluby]

[jdp]

As this has appeared again, which is why it came to mind to post to this thread (as noted in my previous post, it's rare), here's an example attached.

[jdp]

Interesting... in the original of the attachment just sent (should have said TEXT DELETED not TEXT DELETE - spelling oops!), the bad arrows are bunched at the top left corner of the page. When I just downloaded it from the thread, the arrows appear at the bottom right of the page.
Hope this helps.

[pluby]

I took a look inside your attached .odt file and what I found is that the coordinates of all of the lines are way off the edge of the page. For example, many of the lines have X, Y coordinates that are both greater than 29000cm. This tells me that NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code is scaling the lines by a huge factor.

I doubt I that I can easily find the cause of this OpenOffice.org so I think the best approach is to find a workaround that avoids this bug.

My theory is that this bug occurs in the OpenOffice.org Writer layout code so can you try moving the lines in your document into an embedded Draw object? Draw documents don't do line layout and pagination so my hope is that by isolating all of your drawings into a Draw object that is embedded in your Writer document, this bug won't ruin your drawings when you save in the future.

To move your drawings to an embedded Draw object, use the following steps:

1. Select the Insert :: Object :: OLE Object menu and in the dialog that appears, select the "Create new" radio button, select "NeoOffice 3.1.1 Drawing" from the list, and press the OK button

2. Click outside of the embedded Draw object that you created in step 1, select some drawings, and select the Edit :: Copy menu

3. Double-click on the embedded Draw object that you created in step 1 and paste by selecting the Edit :: Paste menu

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of your drawings are in the embedded Draw document

5. Delete the original drawings in the Writer document that you copied and size and position the embedded Draw object so that it occupies the same size and position as the original drawings did

Do the above steps stop this bug from occurring?

Patrick

[jdp]

Hi Patrick - I've been away hence the delay in answering. I believe I've followed your prescription, except that I copied and pasted a few of the lines and arrows one by one (I don't think that would make a difference?). However, the positioning of the lines and arrows ("my drawings") seem to appear in the OLE object drawing at rather random places (some falling on top of one another), rather than assuming their original positional distribution, so it doesn't seem to be the cure - but tnx for the try anyways .

Fortunately, this occurs very infrequently so that copying the page from backup as I've been doing has been a sufficient "work-around".

Do you have any idea how I might have placed the drawings (lines and arrows) so that the coordinates were, in fact, "off the page"? As I recall I simply placed them at the appropriate place between the words they were intended to link together diagrammatically. Cheers, and tnx again, Josh

[pluby]

[jdp]

Hi Patrick - I can try to do that but it happens *so* very infrequently (often MONTHS apart) that I really can't document all the changes - there are hundreds over that kind of time span, of course .

If I do spot anything that even begins to look like a pattern, I'll pass it along to you by all means.

Thanks again for your effort here! Cheers, Josh