Bibliography DB and DBaseIII files [was: Patch for Easy Hack 45033]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 03:15:10PM +0000, Caolán McNamara wrote:

> Aha, now I understand the problem. Looking a bit closer, our biblio.odb
> *doesn't* embed the database inside the .odb, this is one of the .odbs
> which point to an external data source/sink. In this case it points to
> ~/.libreoffice/3/user/database/biblio/biblio.db[f|t] so whenever anyone
> edits it then only their local .dbf and .dbt files get their data
> changed :-)

> Documented a way to update the bibliography database that works with
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=c7de2ddf67158733ba15cea4cb8f1786e83776d9 

> caolanm->lionel: might be worth having a look at the points a & b in
> that README, not sure if those are bugs or intentional behavior.

> a) oddly base doesn't show the same fields that the bibliography
>    widget does, possibly a bug worth fixing ?

Cannot immediately reproduce. Which field is visible in one, but not
the other?

> b) oddly base doesn't seem to "PACK" the dbase III files after
>    editing, so deleted records still take up space in the file,
>    possibly a bug worth fixing ?

Let's make it an easyhack. Put me in CC on it. It is not entirely
clear when we should pack it. After every change is too much
(performance-wise). When some threshold of space is wasted? When the
.odb file is closed? When the .odb file is saved (but then if only
data and no form / report / ... is changed, we never pack....).

Do you have an idea of how to "PACK" a dbase III file? Is is already
implemented in our code and we just need to add the function call or
does that need to be added, too?

-- 
Lionel