[libreoffice-users] File corruption on OSX and LO 4252

I encountered a most infuriating problem today when working with LO on
OSX - file corruption when writing to an external disk drive.

As I'm often having to work with different machines, and different OSes,
I have an external FAT formatted LaCie hard drive to store my files on.
This works great on Linux, Windows and OSX.

Until LO 4252, I had never encountered any file corruption issues,
absent power cuts and NFS shares ;-) and I have been using StarOffice,
then OpenOffice and now LO since StarOffice first became available for
OSes other than Windows - that just goes to show how long my teeth are
with regard to this product.

However, in the space of a fortnight, LO 4252 has successfully trashed
two Writer documents that I was working on, irreparably, once about a
fortnight ago, and once today. The first time it happened, I thought it
was a one-off, and I actually hadn't been working on the file for long
when it happened.

Today, I lost two hours work, and working to a very tight deadline
thanks to a client's late order. Needless to say, I was/am not impressed.

The file can not be opened in any of the following :

OOo 3.2.1
OOo 4.0.0
LO 3.6.7
LO 4.1.3
LO 4.2.5

The file can not be unzipped or repaired with zip, and yet it is stated
as weighing in at 73 kb (of binary rubbish).

I love LO, and the whole open source idea, but the product needs a
serious quality rethink if things like this can happen. I have had no
such issues on Linux, which just goes to show that the developers, as a
whole, give little heed to the changes they make in the code and the
effect it can have on other OSes (Windows, Mac) - as they would say,
"how are we supposed to know whether change x or y will have an impact
on a closed source OS ?" - more attention is given to the Windows arena
because that is where the perceived markets are for the taking. This
leaves the little people like Joe Bloggs / Jane Doe, etc, here, to deal
with the issues on OSX, of which there are many, and too few developers
willing or interested to care about fixing them.


Had I stuck to MS Word (yes, I have Office 2011 for Mac), this would not
have happened, of that I am certain. Had I stuck to 4.1.x, this would
not have happened either, but no that is now obsolete...instead we have
a 4.2.5.x as "stable" with deficiencies like the one I encountered, and
as a businessman, I begin to seriously start questioning the
benefit/risk assessment of the whole LO thing.

This is just a word of warning to others, as they say "your mileage may
vary".

Alex

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