Joined: Jun 21, 2003 Posts: 173 Location: Selmer, Tennessee
Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:11 pm Post subject: Is this a bug?
I've made up an appraisal form in NeoOffice 1.2. Downloaded Neo 2.0 A3, opened the form, saved as a template.
Opened the template and <nearly> completed an appraisal on it (most of a day's work.) Immediately after opening the template, I saved it to its new home in the appraisal folder. All day, it kept interrupting me to save the document as I had instructed it to do, every 15 minutes. So I'm nearly finished, and futzed the imbedded spreadsheet mildly. Then I screwed it up royally. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just close the document and reopen the latest saved version, and re-do it."
Now, I had not manually saved except for the initial save after opening the template. I had thought AutoSave was my friend. When I re-opened what I thought was the latest saved version, I got my blank form. No data at all. (This is a writer document; the "form" is done with tables. There are several checkbox controls on it.)
So, true to my normal form, after the catastrophe occurred, I read the help file. It says that AutoSave saves file <recovery> information; it does not say that it saves the file itself. So is this a bug? Or did the program do exactly what it's supposed to do? If the latter, it certainly isn't the behavior I expected. Which, of course, means that it didn't read my mind correctly.
Joined: Jun 21, 2003 Posts: 173 Location: Selmer, Tennessee
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:15 am Post subject: Critical info update
Forgot to include my system configuration. It's below in the sig.
Considering that I'm running antique Mac hardware, a program's failure to read my mind correctly isn't surprising. I'm wondering whether I simply overtaxed the program or my system. _________________ Jim Plante
MacOS X 10.6.34, MacBook 2GHz C2Duo, 2gb, Neo 3.1.1 p 1
It sounds like maybe you wanted the "Always create backup copy" option instead, which will keep the immediately prior document version around when you save....
(The help is often quite good, but the OOo UI designers could learn a few things about making clear and useable UIs )
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 1:41 pm Post subject:
Hi Jim,
after a thorough examination of your mind, system configuration, the world & the rest, I conclude that
1. the answer to your question is the answer to all unsolved mysteries related to IT & more: It's not a bug, it's a feature,
2. your mind was probably tricked into believing, that "AutoSave" in Neo/OpenOffice means the same like in a rather uncommon office suite which answers to MS Office,
3. I had for months the same misconception about AutoSave, but luckily escaped your fate; we have both learned a valuable lesson, albeit you suffered more pain (I feel with you)
4. I agree with sardisson that UI design is a tricky thing
5. a regular Command-S gives my mind always a rest
Nice weekend (or what's left of it) to all, Martin
Joined: Jun 21, 2003 Posts: 173 Location: Selmer, Tennessee
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 3:30 pm Post subject: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
...or with File->Templates->Save
Just spent some time modifying a template, and saved it. Closed and reopened the template, and all my changes were gone!
Figured it out, though. I just upgraded to 2.0A3P1 about two days ago, so all my templates are .stw's. I opened an stw template, made changes to it, and saved it. But it saved as .ott, just as it's supposed to do. It did not overwrite the .stw, as I had thought it would. File->New->From Template defaulted to using the .stw file.
I had to use the Finder to go to ~/Library/Preferences/Neo2/.../templates and manually remove the .stw from the templates file. Otherwise, New Doc from Template was bound and determined that it was going to use that .stw. Once I removed it, everything worked fine.
I'd be whining a lot more if this wasn't such an improvement over 1.2. Despite these little surprises, Neo2 rocks! _________________ Jim Plante
MacOS X 10.6.34, MacBook 2GHz C2Duo, 2gb, Neo 3.1.1 p 1
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 3:55 pm Post subject: Re: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
Jim wrote:
...or with File->Templates->Save
Just spent some time modifying a template, and saved it. Closed and reopened the template, and all my changes were gone!
Figured it out, though. I just upgraded to 2.0A3P1 about two days ago, so all my templates are .stw's. I opened an stw template, made changes to it, and saved it. But it saved as .ott, just as it's supposed to do. It did not overwrite the .stw, as I had thought it would. File->New->From Template defaulted to using the .stw file.
I had to use the Finder to go to ~/Library/Preferences/Neo2/.../templates and manually remove the .stw from the templates file. Otherwise, New Doc from Template was bound and determined that it was going to use that .stw. Once I removed it, everything worked fine.
Well, now, in my opinion, this is really a bug. NeoOffice should always use the new (updated) template if there are two with the same name in the template directory. You should report this behaviour as a bug in bugzilla
http://bugzilla.neooffice.org/index.php
(which, at this very moment, seems to be a bit offline).
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 1:41 am Post subject: Re: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
doctype wrote:
Jim wrote:
I had to use the Finder to go to ~/Library/Preferences/Neo2/.../templates and manually remove the .stw from the templates file. Otherwise, New Doc from Template was bound and determined that it was going to use that .stw. Once I removed it, everything worked fine.
Well, now, in my opinion, this is really a bug. NeoOffice should always use the new (updated) template if there are two with the same name in the template directory. You should report this behaviour as a bug in bugzilla
http://bugzilla.neooffice.org/index.php
No, you should report this as a bug in the OpenOffice.org bugzilla (unless you've specifically checked and discovered it works properly in OOo but not in Neo, which would surprise me greatly if it were true in this case). Bugs in core application features (and poor design decisions, of which OOo makes many) are almost always OOo bugs.
IMO, that dialogue should show all templates in a folder, regardless of version (MS Office templates, OOo 1.x templates, OpenDocument templates)--and should list them by filename rather than by some strange label (in fact, doing the latter might make the former work correctly automatically, since foo.stw and foo.ott are clearly different even if both are the "foo" template).
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:56 am Post subject: Re: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
sardisson wrote:
No, you should report this as a bug in the OpenOffice.org bugzilla (unless you've specifically checked and discovered it works properly in OOo but not in Neo, which would surprise me greatly if it were true in this case).
You're right. I can't test OpenOffice.org/X11-behaviour there, because I have no pre-2 installation preferences (templates) for the X11 version. Is anybody able to test this?
EDIT: Forget the last sentence. I will use the ones from NeoOffice 1.2, well, I really should drink 2 cups of coffee instead of one before posting ...
Additionally, does anyone know if other versions of OpenOffice 2 also do the "importing templates"-thing (from a previous version) on first startup? I searched OpenOffice.org & the "Howto" for the X11-version, found nothing.
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 4:09 am Post subject: Re: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
Jim wrote:
Just spent some time modifying a template, and saved it. Closed and reopened the template, and all my changes were gone!
Figured it out, though. I just upgraded to 2.0A3P1 about two days ago, so all my templates are .stw's. I opened an stw template, made changes to it, and saved it. But it saved as .ott, just as it's supposed to do. It did not overwrite the .stw, as I had thought it would. File->New->From Template defaulted to using the .stw file.
I had to use the Finder to go to ~/Library/Preferences/Neo2/.../templates and manually remove the .stw from the templates file. Otherwise, New Doc from Template was bound and determined that it was going to use that .stw. Once I removed it, everything worked fine.
All right (one cup of coffee later), FYI, I could reproduce this bug with OpenOffice.org/X11 2.0.3. So, as sardisson suggested, this bug report should go to the OpenOffice bugtracker.
Joined: Jun 21, 2003 Posts: 173 Location: Selmer, Tennessee
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:58 am Post subject:
Okay, it's bug #1506.
You know, that one could drive a neophyte nuts! Imagine not knowing that templates are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/Neo2.../templates and believing that a couple of hours worth of work is trashed forever. Then again, if they've been using Neo 1.2 that long, they probably wouldn't give up without a fight anyway. I know it got my attention.
----
Update: Aww dammit! I filed it on the Neo Bugzilla. Guess I needed that extra cup of coffee.
Ooo bug #66095 _________________ Jim Plante
MacOS X 10.6.34, MacBook 2GHz C2Duo, 2gb, Neo 3.1.1 p 1
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 3:23 pm Post subject: Re: Don't get too comfortable with manual saves...
doctype wrote:
Additionally, does anyone know if other versions of OpenOffice 2 also do the "importing templates"-thing (from a previous version) on first startup? I searched OpenOffice.org & the "Howto" for the X11-version, found nothing.
In the m100-era, OOo on first launch put up essentially the same dialogue as Neo 2 does, offering to import my OOo 1.x preferences. I never was able to get it to work successfully (it seemed to be looking for some UNIXy locations, like ~/.openoffice_foo rather than the two locations that the official OOo 1.x/X11 builds used, and no manner of symlinking ever made it work), so I just gave up. Maybe it works now with the released versions of OOo 2/X11, maybe not.
The feature is there in X11, and I expect it works properly in Windows, Solaris, and Linux/x86 and imports those old templates.
No worries about the coffee...we all need a little something to get our brains working sometimes
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
)
