Re: Document conversion engine

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Flavio Moringa <
flavio.moringa@caixamagica.pt> wrote:

> I know that you can convert documents through the command line, using
> LibreOffice headless mode, and that can be something that's useful for
> scripting automatic tests... although I know that sometimes the main
> problems are "visual" and it's difficult to automatically detect the
> problems...

I think that we still need human eyes for the final comparison, however the
rest of the system could be automated a bit more -- e.g. we could put
sample docs in subdirectories named by bug# and add screenshots of the docs
as rendered in MS-Office; add in a script to have LO iterate over the
subdirectories and spit out screenshots of how it renders the original
files, and a little HTML GUI so that you can tab-through 2-ups of the
original rendering vs. LO's rendering, and you've got a decent tool for
testing improvements/regressions.

Is there any kind of repository for documents that are candidates for
> conversion testing? I mean documents which are known to have conversion
> problems, and that are used to test improvements to the filters?

I usually just search bugzilla for "conversion" or "formatting" :-) Even
documents attached to old bugs can be helpful, as they can serve as
regression tests.

I would like very much to become more involved in improving the conversion
> filters, since it seems to be a major problem in LibreOffice adoption, and
> everything that can be done to help in that area would certainly boost
> LibreOffice adoption specially in the enterprise world.

Yes, fidelity of document rendering is definitely one of the biggest
hurdles I've faced when encouraging people to try LO. Any improvements on
that front will be greatly appreciated!

--R