Writer 4.2 Guide Chapter 12 for review

Hi Peter,
[...]

I would certainly be happy to review the chapter on forms. How do I let
others know thta I am reviewing it , how do I down load the chapter? How
do I submit corrections etc and then upload it?

This is explained here on the wiki
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development#Workflow
But as Jean said, you should ask Alan Cook how to process for the Base
Handbook.

Kind regards
Sophie (still learning the whole workflow too :slight_smile:

Hi Peter,

I just checked if you have already an account on ODFAuthors. You had, but
you were missing some rights, which I fixed now.

If you are currently logged in, please log out and back in. Then you should
also have the option to retract a chapter (which means, that other people
see, that you have it checked out). This does not prevent them from
downloading it themselves, but at least they should realise, that they
might be duplicating some work.

If there are still some open questions, don't hesitate to come back here
and ask. The people working with the site for a long time might be "blind"
to those little things that make getting started easier for newcomers.

Thanks again for your willingness to help. :wink:

Sigrid

I have found where to download the Base chapter on forms. I cannot see where to mark that I have down loaded it to review and correct. I am sorry for being a bit slow but I will eventually get the hang of your system.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile: I have put you into the wiki;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks#Status_of_tasks_BH_v4.2
I mis-spelt your surname in the comments :frowning: and can't edit it. Hopefully
when you sign the chapter back in i can put the correct speeling in
Apols and regards from
tom :slight_smile:

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat different to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the forms options described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu repository. It says it is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There are a whole heap of optional extras which I did not download initially.

1. Is this the right version of the database software, i.e. the one the documentation is intended for?
2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

I intend to work my way through the document , page by page to ensure that whatever it says can be done works as described.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi Peter,

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat different
to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the forms options
described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu repository. It says it
is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There are a whole heap of
optional extras which I did not download initially.

Base hasn't been changed since the start of LO with LO 3.3. There aren't
any extras installed for the forms.

In the first versions all Toolbars for forms where shown automatically
when starting to create a form. They had also been closed afterwords. I
will have a look for the version where it had been changed. Could be
many peole see the screenshots and thin there are some extras.
Open a form for editing.
Go to
View → Toolbars → Form Controls
View → Toolbars → Form Design

Are these the "optional extras" you are missing?

Regards

Robert

Peter,

2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

Off-hand, check that you also have the following packages :

libreoffice-base-drivers
libreoffice-report-builder
libreoffice-report-builder-bin

Alex

Hi :slight_smile:
Are you using Windows, Mac or Linux? I am not sure how to do that in
Windows but in Linux it would be something like;

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-base-drivers

Rinse and repeat for the other 2. In some distros you might need to
replace apt-get with something else, usually "yum" or something.
Alternatively just open a package-manager and have a look for those
packages/programs in there.

Sorry i have no idea how to check this in Windows! :frowning:
Regards form
Tom :slight_smile:

So, what was the final resolution on this?

Was it decided that:

1. There have been changes that until now no one has noticed.
2. The Linux distribution specific versions break things apart and you simply needed to install the rest of the bits and pieces.
3. The Ubuntu assembled distribution is just different
4. Something I missed?

Hi Andrew,

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat
different to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the
forms options described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu
repository. It says it is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There
are a whole heap of optional extras which I did not download initially.

1. Is this the right version of the database software, i.e. the one
the documentation is intended for?
2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

I intend to work my way through the document , page by page to ensure
that whatever it says can be done works as described.

Regards

Peter Goggin

So, what was the final resolution on this?

None for the moment. I think that we should stick with the TDF
LibreOffice version because there is always integrations made by the
distro packagers.

Was it decided that:

1. There have been changes that until now no one has noticed.
2. The Linux distribution specific versions break things apart and you
simply needed to install the rest of the bits and pieces.
3. The Ubuntu assembled distribution is just different
4. Something I missed?

I haven't checked for all, but I think that the distributions assembled
by packagers are all different because of the integration. Also
depending on your desktop environment, you won't access the same
shortcuts. May be we should add a small text explaining it.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
Peter Goggin's email seems to have been broken shortly after posting his
first message in this thread. I don't think we have any other way of
contacting him.

I think the established policy, at least for screen-shots, is to install
the version of LIbreOffice from the official LibreOffice website. It makes
sense to either have it in parallel alongside whichever version you use for
normal work or to rename the User Profile just to make sure your version
has been set to factory defaults and then apply the appropriate theme and
icon-set. Mostly this is probably unnecessary - except in cases like this,
where there appears to be a significant discrepancy to figure out. This is
covered in the Preface that is common to all guides, see pages 5-6.

Wrt the KDE issue i think it might be handy to have a section about the KDE
keyboard-shortcuts issue under the section about using LibreOffice on
Macs. That's on page 6 at the moment.

I'm not sure if it'd be unhelpful to have a disclaimer mentioning that
there might be similar issues on all DEs. Detractors might use that to
point out that LO is not the same on every platform when really such issues
are fairly trivial for most normal users. On the other hand all these
guides seem to be refreshingly honest compared to most tech guides.

At the moment the Preface neatly fits onto 8 pages, which is very
convenient for printing. There is a lot of white-space on pages 2 and 3.
Page 2 has a section called "Contributors" but on page 7 there are 2
sections that might fit well with that;
"Who wrote this book" and
"Acknowledgements"
The space on page 3 looks like it might be able to fit the first 2 sections
of page 4;
"Who is this book for" and
"What's in this book"

However i don't really like the idea of moving stuff around because
1. it might then become inconsistent with other chapters and those other
chapters might have varying amounts of white-space on the equivalent pages
so changing those too might lead to some really bad layouts
2. the whole Preface looks very well laid out and it looks like
considerable thought went into it all.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I solve most of my problems with Base. I removed it and then did a full install with all of the extras, whether they looked as if they may be needed or not. I am now more than halfway through reveiwing the Forms chapter, checking that the documentation and the program match. Once I have a list of comments and suggestions I will e-mail them out.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi :slight_smile:
Wow! Fantastic :)) Glad to see you've solved the email problems.

It's better if you can
1. download the chapter,
2. make the changes directly and
3. re-upload the file to the new folder
Odd little comments and queries might be better as you go along, or batched
up a little bit, so that you can build-up an idea of how such things have
arisen or how they would be handled. With Base you probably have more of a
free-reign at the moment because not many people understand the issues.

All/lots comments at the end is ok too.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I am working through the documentation for the forms. To do this properly I needed a data base. As I have an access data base which I want to convert to Librebase I used this. I exported the tables from Access as Excel files, opened them in Librecalc, saved them in native librecalc format. I made sure the column definitions were correct for dates.

I copied the data cells and imported them into a Base table. I found a problem with all fields which were created as text. If I change the date columns to date format I cannot save the new version of the base table without losing the date data. Is there any way of importing data and preserving the data format?

Many years ago using Oracle SQL I believe you could import text data into an already created table if your text data had been properly formatted. Is this possible with LibreBase?

Thanks for an advice.

This won't stop me from continuing to reviews the documentation but it would be good to know how to import data , retaining the formatting and data types.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi Peter,

I am working through the documentation for the forms. To do this
properly I needed a data base.

I thought there had been added the example-databases to the
Base-Handbook. But when I had a look at
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/
I don't fin the translated examples. So I have uploaded them to the
following folder:
http://robert.familiegrosskopf.de/lo_hb_en/

There arae many more examples on
http://de.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

Some of the content of other chapters will link to this examples - which
aren't translated yet.

As I have an access data base which I
want to convert to Librebase I used this. I exported the tables from
Access as Excel files, opened them in Librecalc, saved them in native
librecalc format. I made sure the column definitions were correct for dates.

I copied the data cells and imported them into a Base table. I found a
problem with all fields which were created as text. If I change the
date columns to date format I cannot save the new version of the base
table without losing the date data. Is there any way of importing data
and preserving the data format?

You have to change the format before you import the data. If it is a
date in Calc it would be a date in Base, too. Could be the import-wizard
doesn't recognize this automatically.

Many years ago using Oracle SQL I believe you could import text data
into an already created table if your text data had been properly
formatted. Is this possible with LibreBase?

If the field contains strings it isn't possible to create a date with
this content.
You could send me some rows of such a table (in *.ods-format) so I will
have a look.

Regards

Robert

Hi :slight_smile:
I think Base is better when you use an external back-end. The Postgresql
people made the effort to work with LO devs to make a native connector that
is built into LO. MySql is another commonly used database program but it's
owned by Oracle so it might be better to go for the drop-in replacement,
MariaDb instead of MySql.

The problem with the internal back-end is that it's been known to have
issues such as data-loss!! Not good for a database program!! The devs are
working at replacing the current ancient, warped version of HsqlDb with an
up-dateable version of Firebird but apparently that runs into problems too
at the moment, at least last i heard which was several months ago.

Base was originally designed to never have an internal back-end but so many
people grumbled that it was alien to Access users that the Sun devs tried
to squeeze in something but then found they didn't have the time and
resources to make a good job of it.

So, i think i'd suggest exporting the Tables from Access directly into
Postgresql or maybe into MySql/MariaDb.

I've forwarded the question to the Users Mailing list to see if anyone
there can help Peter with this.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

They are on the wiki and have been for some time, but I failed to link
to them from the website.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Base_Handbook

(Unless you are talking about some other examples.)

--Jean

Hi Peter,

Access as Excel files, opened them in Librecalc, saved them in native
librecalc format. I made sure the column definitions were correct for
dates.

As Robert has mentioned, you must make sure that the data type stored in
Calc is really a DATE and not just a text string *formatted* as a date,
otherwise the import to Base will import the text string.

It is also not impossible that the import wizard has a bug when it comes
to interpreting dates, or that this functionality is dependent on the
version of LibreOffice you are using, as the DATE API changed sometime
during 4.1 development and has had further "work" done on it since then.
These changes could have had a knock on effect on the import wizard.

Alex

I finally solved how to transfer the data from Access to Base. The steps are very simple and work well. During the creation stage I did not realize that while the Create button was available there was a Next stage also available where the data types of the newly crated table fields can be modified. (May be the Create button should not be available until the data types have been checked) Setting the date fields to date and the other fields to correct types solved the problems. Since my "ACCESS" data base allows me to fully check the forms documentation I will continue using this in parallel with the proper sample data bases.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi :slight_smile:
Congrats Peter!! Nicely done :))

I posted that answer back to the Users Mailing List and consolidated the
best answers from there into this post
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-documentation-Re-Base-Document-Forms-tp4123900p4124035.html
(jic anyone needs to deal with this issue again, hopefully this might
help). I've just realised i should have included some of the answers from
here too! Sorry!
Apols , congrats and regards from
Tom :slight_smile: