RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS Word .docx formatting in Libre Office

Oops, I forgot a case.

When I opened the original ODT document with the drawing-created text box in Microsoft Office Word 
2010, the document opened with only one problem.  The box was too small for the text so I had to 
enlarge the frame a little to get all of the text to fit.  I could see it was all there but clipped 
by the frame of the text box.  

So room for more interoperability to be worked on.  Still not as terrible as LO not being able to 
read back the docx of its own creation.

Finally, out of curiosity, I looked into the XML of the .docx that LO 3.3.2 made.  There is no text 
in it.

Word 2010 didn't lose the text.  It never got that far.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 23:58
To: 'users@global.libreoffice.org'
Cc: 'NoOp'
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS Word .docx formatting in Libre Office

If I wanted to make a text box, going to the drawing tool is not intuitive to me.

But I did that one too, just to see what the differences are.

 - Dennis

SUMMARY

It appears that it is LibreOffice that is losing the text when reading the DOCX text box.

When the same .docx is read back into LibreOffice, it has no text at all and even the border I 
added is gone.

Microsoft Office Word 2010 sees the border but not the content.  If I put content in on the Word 
2010 side, it comes back to LO in an ODT and a DOC, but LO doesn't see the text in the DOCX (though 
it now sees the frame.)

The only odd thing about bringing the adjusted DOCX (adding the text back in) as an ODT from Word 
2010 is that a stray empty graphic box shows up on the ODT page.  But the text box and its text are 
there too.  This is true when the exported ODT is read back into Word 2010 and when it is read into 
LibreOffice 3.3.2.

CONCLUSION

I stand by my original analysis.  None of them have anything to be proud of, but the round tripping 
of DOCX from LibreOffice is far worse than the ODT round-tripped from Word 2010, although the added 
graphic frame is certainly undesirable.

The side-by-side and interchange case analysis to raise the level of interoperability is still 
required.

DETAILS

I made a text box using View | Toolbars | Drawing.  I selected "T" and drew a box with the modified 
cursor and added text to it.  Then I positioned the box where I wanted and use the Line dialog to 
put a border around the box.

I save this as an .odt file from LibreOffice 3.3.2.  It re-opens correctly.

With the ODT open in LibreOffice 3.3.2, I saved the file as a Microsoft Word 2007 .docx.

When I reopened the file in LibreOffice 3.3.2, the page is blank.  There is nothing in it.

When I open the file in Microsoft Office 2010, I get the frame and the border and no text.

So, with the visible frame selected in Office 2010, I right click and select the "Add Text" option 
in the context menu.

I then save that as a .docx, as a .doc, and as an .odt.  Word 2010 opens the saved .doc and  .docx 
with the added-in perfectly.  It opens the .odt perfectly except there is a stray empty text frame 
in the upper left corner of the document.  The centered frame with text is as I saved it.  I have 
no idea how the stray graphic frame came along for the ride.

Now, using LibreOffice 3.3.2 and the three versions made from Microsoft Word 2010, here is the 
result:

The docx comes into LibreOffice with the border and text frame showing, but the text frame is 
empty.  (This is better than it does with the docx it created itself, where everything is lost.)

The .doc comes back perfectly as saved from Microsoft Office Word 2010.

The .odt text box comes back just fine too, and the stray box is in the upper left corner that 
showed up on round-trip back into Word 2010 is also there in LO 3.3.2. 




-----Original Message-----
From: NoOp [mailto:glgxg@sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 19:34
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS Word .docx formatting in Libre Office

On 08/12/2011 07:03 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:

> -----Original Message----- From: NoOp [mailto:<snipped>] 
> Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 17:23 To: users@global.libreoffice.org 
> Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS Word .docx formatting in Libre
> Office
>
> [ ... ]
>
> Open LO. Make a simple text box with some text in it. Save as an
> .docx & let us know how that works out for you.

> I'm not so sure the bug report being discussed is anything so simple,
> but I took on your little experiment.
>
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> It would seem, in this simple case, that no one has much to be proud
> of concerning interop between the different native formats.  It is
> odd that the worst case here is the DOCX output from LibreOffice read
> back into LibreOffice.  But Word 2010 doesn't round-trip to and from
> ODT a lot better (although it is a lot easier to adjust manually if
> desired).
>
> To get this right, there needs to be a more-systematic effort that
> determines what discretionary provisions are being handled
> differently and what other features at the format level would be more
> successful.
>
>
> DETAILS
>
> I started in LO 3.3.2 Writer by inserting a frame around a paragraph
> of text, then saving it as a Microsoft Office Word 2007 DOCX format.

"Text Box":
View|Toolbars|Drawing
Click on the 'T'|write something|exit the textbox
etc.


...


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