Re: [libreoffice-users] Printing serial letters

On 12/10/14 06:27 AM, Dave Barton wrote:
> -------- Original Message  -------- From: Gary Dale
> <garydale@torfree.net> To: Dave Barton <db@tasit.net> Date: Sun, 12 Oct
> 2014 00:14:10 -0400
>
> > On 11/10/14 04:59 PM, Dave Barton wrote:
> > > Heinrich Stöllinger wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > A long time ago (REALLY long ago!) I complained that LO does not print
> > > > serial letters correctly.
> > > > I think I also filed a bug report with (in MY opinion!) the right test
> > > > data. I just tried to
> > > > print such serial letters again today. Unfortunately the problem still
> > > > exists. As you can maybe
> > > > see from the enclosed pdf-file, only the FIRST letter prints correctly,
> > > > while ANY letters after
> > > > the first one miss out lines of text (e.g. the place and date near the
> > > > top on the right),
> > > > drawn lines (near the bottom). Even though I use a MySQL database as
> > > > "supplier" of DB-fields,
> > > > I don't think this has anything to do with Base.
> > > > It should be easy enough to put together a test for this issue, but I
> > > > include the respective
> > > > .odt-file in any case. Again, I don't think a DB-table is necessary for
> > > > testing.
> > > > Regards
> > > > Heinrich
> > > Heinrich,
> > > Is https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76257 the bug report you
> > > are referring to? If so, I will take a look and see if I can replicate
> > > and confirm it.
> > >
> > > Gary,
> > > Please add a reproducible example to Heinrich's report. This will:
> > > a) Assist QA in assessing if it is the same bug or not.
> > > b) Add more weight to the issue, which in turn is more likely to attract
> > > a developer's interest.
> > > If you know it's not the exactly the same issue and your reference to
> > > "messing up colors" suggests that it may not be, please find and
> > > contribute to an existing report, or open a new one.
> > > Nobody (developer, QA or other) "denies the existence of an issue", but
> > > no issue can be effectively resolved if it cannot be replicated and it's
> > > cause determined. Which is where we come in with accurate reports and
> > > reproducible examples.
> > >
> > > This list is a great place to vent our frustrations about our "pet"
> > > issues, but at the end of the day our "rants" here do nothing, only our
> > > contributions (ie. bug reports and reproducible examples) will help to
> > > get anything done.
> > >
> > > Dave
> > I've already done everything you asked and more,
> No, I have not asked you to do anything, except provide a pointer to the
> location where the details of the issue could be found.
Actually you asked for a reproducible example, which I've already 
provided, along with screen shots showing the bug.

> > including sending screen shots to demonstrate that the problem is with LibreOffice and not 
> > something else.
> Where are these screen shots? There are no attachments to bug 83346.
That's because bugzilla refuses to take e-mail from me. I can send bug 
reports via reportbug but it doesn't want to take e-mail sent via 
icedove, probably due to the way it reads addresses - ignoring the 
reply-to and only using the from field.

> > If you look in the print dialogue, it shows that
> > LibreOffice thinks it is printing 2N-1 pages instead of N pages. And no,
> > this is not the "print automatically inserted blank pages" "feature".
> There is no way for others to determine if this is true without details
> (eg. samples, screen shots, etc.)
You can get them directly from developer Cor Nouws. The fact that he 
failed to attach them to the bug report suggests that he doesn't see the 
problem.

> > The reason I think it is probably the same bug is that in both cases
> > LibreOffice doesn't initiate the new page properly. I guess in
> > monochrome it chews up some text while in colour it mangles the colour
> > coding.
> It does not necessarily follow that similar issues come from the same
> section of the (very large) code base. I have seen numerous examples
> where changes to one part of the code has an unexpected impact on an
> apparently unrelated function.
Perhaps but the odds are against the same effect having two separate 
causes.

> > My latest bug report on it was 83346. I sent the samples to Cor Nouws
> > who closed the bug after deciding that it was a "feature" that no sane
> > person would ask for - the mangling of colours. Apparently he didn't
> > note that "feature" he thought it was, was actually a symptom of the
> > problem I was reporting.
> There is no way of determining if Cor was right or wrong if the samples
> you refer to are not made publicly available (eg. Bugzilla).
>
> At this stage I am not going to reopen the report, but if you want to
> reply to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83346#c2 I am
> prepared to work with you on this. Please do not send anything directly
> to me.
>
> I am not an active developer, but if this can be demonstrated as an
> issue that needs fixing, it can be brought to the attention of the
> developers.
Again, blame Cor for not attaching them. So long as bugzilla doesn't 
take legitimate followups, I can't do much. I'd like to send you the 
e-mail I sent him but if you're not willing to accept it, I'm stymied.


> > BTW: I also fail to see why anyone would think that inserting blank
> > pages between form letters is a feature that should be on by default. I
> > print a lot of different types of form letters and have never found any
> > use for it. If it's useful to someone, leave it in but don't enable it
> > by default.
> In your case it may not serve any purpose, but I have assisted a number
> of book authors in using Writer to create their manuscripts. In those
> and other similar situations this is an extremely useful option. Few
> others are likely to see this as an issue, since it is a "user
> definable" global option. While we would all like things to work
> "straight out of the box" exactly the way we want, in reality the best
> we can ask/hope for is an option to configure our specific requirements.
As I said, I'm not asking for the feature to be removed, although I 
don't really see how form letters help authors create manuscripts, but 
rather for it to not be enabled by default. I suggest that there are a 
lot more business users creating form letters than there are authors 
creating manuscripts. And for almost anyone, having spurious blank pages 
inserted into the output is not what they want. As a global default, it 
should be unchecked, not checked.

It's possible that this "feature" is related to the bug because both 
cause interspersed blank pages that show up in the page count in the 
print dialogue.


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