Drawings in Text Documents--Drawings and GDI Metafile Probs

[gpas]

Hi, folks.

I'm having a lot of problems putting my NeoOffice Drawings in a NeoOffice text document.

First I started by Paste Special... using "Drawing format" but the graphics don't scale well, so I started using GDI metafile and results looked good. But sometimes I work in OpenOffice/Windows and move the documents back and forth. The GDI metafile looks all borked up, particularly text, and when I move back the graphics are completely lost.

What is the best way of getting better compatibility with graphics that scale well?

Thanks,
Geoff

[pluby]

[OPENSTEP]

If they are NeoOffice Draw files, you may want to consider adding the Draw file directly as an OLE object:

1. Insert > Object > OLE Objectx
   
2. Select the "Create from File" radio button
   
3. Click "Search" button to bring up the file chooser
   
4. Find your file and click "Open"
   

Note that you can use "Link" if you want to update the embedded drawing automatically from the file when it changes, but if you're sending documents to other computers I'd leave it off. If it's on, you have to remember to transfer all of the linked files manually, which can become quite painful trying to remember all of the files that were embedded.

ed

[gpas]

First, let mes say you guys are amazing. I can't remember the last time I got such a prompt reply on a message board like this. I'm going to have to go and do another donation--already recommended NeoOffice to a friend that just got a Mac.

I'll give the OLE thing a try. I'm a little confused by the terminology, as that was an old Microsoft technology. Presumably this is a generic "Object Linking and Embedding". So will this allow me to edit "in place"?

Pluby, I think you misunderstood me. I save all my drawings in native .odg format. But then these need to be brought into my text document as figures. That's where I seem to have the scaling and portability problems. Is the GDI metafile stuff supposed to work cross-platform? And still when I bring the copy the drawing into the text document as a figure and try to scale it, the results don't look good. Should I report as a bug?

[pluby]

[OPENSTEP]

Also, this "OLE" method will really be the only way that you can scale the graphics successfully. Draw doesn't really do any vector graphics exports, only bitmaps. That's why it isn't scaling properly.

If you want to use vector graphics in Draw, your only real options are to use either this OLE approach or use EPS. EPS is better as a vector format from other applications.

ed

[gpas]

First, I found it was a little odd that the the size of the window in the saved .odg had a real impact on the dimensions of the inserted figures. It took my awhile to figure that one out, but I think I have that licked. I will let you know if this also solves my portability problem.

However, it looks like I found a bug in Draw. I've got a grouped figure with some curved connectors. If I move the figure the curves go wonky and undo doesn't help. I've uploaded the file. Try it and let me know if you have the same problem. I'm happy to submit a separate bug report if you like.

[narf]

Thank you for providing a sample document and steps to reproduce the problem.

I have some bad news: I found that this same behavior occurs in OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 (which NeoOffice 3.0 is based on) and OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 (their most recent verstion) so this is definitely an OpenOffice.org bug.

Unfortunately, our very limited donations only provides enough funding for one fulltime developer which limits the current scope of the NeoOffice project to keeping a stable version of OpenOffice.org running on Mac OS X. Because of these limits, fixing OpenOffice.org's many feature bugs like this is not something we are able to do.

You can file a bug in the OpenOffice.org issue tracker to see if the core OpenOffice.org developers have the resources to implement a fix and, if they implement this behavior, the new behavior will get included in a future release of NeoOffice:

http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html

Note: our advice is to not mention NeoOffice as mentioning NeoOffice may cause OOo volunteers to accidentally close it without actually reviewing your feature request.


--fran

[gpas]

You're very welcome about the file. I will file this as a bug with OO.

Here's another one that I will also file if you can also verify you have the same problem as me. With this one, when I OLE embed the drawing a layer that is not visible shows up as visible in the embedding--note: this is also the case for the preview in finder/dialogs as well as the pages pane in Draw. I've uploaded this file too. I will file this as a bug with OO also if it is not specifically NeoOffice.

The embedding seems to be getting better results--haven't tried moving it over to OO/Windows yet. Quick question: If I link the figure to the original file will the content still be cached in the embedding Text document? That is, I understand that changes to the Draw file should propagate to the OLE object in the Text document when linked, but does the Text document cache the last content so if the file isn't available the content is still there? One of the problems I've had in other technologies (you know who I'm talking about) is that if the linked-from file doesn't follow the document basically you lose the content. I couldn't find the answer to this in the help or user guides.

[pluby]

[gpas]

Thanks for your help. Yes, in practice, linking does NOT cache and if the file is moved or removed the figures are not rendered. I presume this is the "specified" behavior, since one never knows if such behavior is intentional or an artifact of implementation.

If you confirm the issue with hidden layers, I will report to OO.

I tried moving this over to OO/Windows and the results aren't bad. I've still got another problem--not your problem. I'm using OOoLatex macros and the fonts are all borked up. I embed some these as EMFs in the Drawings, and of course they're as messed up as the main text. Used to be they just rendered a different size, but now they're completely messed up

Thanks again, and to support continued development, and in appreciation for everyone's very prompt help, I have made another donation to NeoOffice. It's not large, but I hope it helps.

Cheers,
Geoff

[narf]

[gpas]

narf, thanks for verifying. I will submit both of these bugs this week.

Thanks to everyone that helped!