Re: Document conversion engine

Hi Robinson,

2012/7/6 Robinson Tryon <bishop.robinson@gmail.com>

> 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.

That's a good ideia, at least it would facilitate the testing, which is
always very helpful... From my initial investigation in document
conversion, the "visual" aspect is alwayst the difficult one because not
all thins are well translated to the XML...


> 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've just replied to Michael Meeks that I'll do just that... try to compile
a list of available documents in bugzilla that have conversion problems,
and test them on the latest beta... And see which problems still exist...

> 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

Thanks

-- 
*Flávio Moringa*
Project Leader



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