Re: [DISCUSS] Release 4.2: General Topics

[Don Lewis]

On 24 Aug, Rory O'Farrell wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:01:22 -0700 (PDT)
> Don Lewis  wrote:

>> Someone should fix the broken spellcheck problem.  It generates a lot of
>> complaints from our users.
>> 
> 
> The "broken spellcheck problem" seems largely to be caused by over hasty 
> close-down of the computer before cached files (both hardware and software 
> caches) are properly written to disk.  User education is the answer - educate 
> them to be patient in closedown and wait for disk activity to finish before 
> power-off.

Maybe using fsync() to flush things out faster when shutting down the
app and keeping a backup copy of the config would help avoid the
problem.   We shouldn't just silently fail when something is corrupt.

I've even experienced this myself on my FreeBSD desktop which stays on
24x7 and has an UPS.  It took me quite a while to notice spellcheck
wasn't working.  I just thought my spelling was unusually good ;-)


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Re: [DISCUSS] Release 4.2: General Topics

[Rory O'Farrell]

On Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:01:22 -0700 (PDT)
Don Lewis  wrote:

> Here is my list:
> 
>   * Update bundled redland / rasqal / raptor to fix a CVE.  This is
> currently in progress.  The FreeBSD port has been using the system
> versions of the latest and greatest.
> 
>   * Updated bundled serf to fix a CVE and a WebDAV issue.  The FreeBSD
> port has been using the system version of the latest and greatest.
> 
>   * [low priority] Update bundled vigra.  This version is no longer
> available upstream.  It is used by the basebmp module, but I don't
> know what it is used for or how to test it.  I believe only the
> headers are used.  The FreeBSD port uses the latest and greatest
> version and I haven't heard of any problems.
> 
>   * [low priority] Updated bundled CoinMP.  There has been an API
> change, which prevents the FreeBSD port from using the system
> version.  Difficulty unknown ...
> 
>   * Fix the easy to fix compiler warnings.  In the case of unused
> private class member variables, deleting them would cause an ABI
> change because the object size would shrink.  If that is a problem
> the alternate would be to mark them unused.  I think there are only
> a small number of these, but they get reported many times.
> 
>   * Handle the Wiki Publisher and PDF Import extensions as integrated
> extensions:
> 
> I've done some work on this in the FreeBSD port, but I haven't
> tackled the installer part for other platforms.
> 
>   * Fix a problem that I stumbled across involving extensions that can
> cause an infinite crash / recover loop.  I think I can generate an
> alert when I detect the problem.  I'm not sure if I can use an
> existing alert message or will need a new one.  If the latter, then
> there will be some translation work required.
> 
>   * Give network connection failures a more informative error message.
> I stumbled across this when tracking down a problem that was
> confined to FreeBSD.
> 
> 
> Someone should fix the broken spellcheck problem.  It generates a lot of
> complaints from our users.
> 

The "broken spellcheck problem" seems largely to be caused by over hasty 
close-down of the computer before cached files (both hardware and software 
caches) are properly written to disk.  User education is the answer - educate 
them to be patient in closedown and wait for disk activity to finish before 
power-off.

-- 
Rory O'Farrell 

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RE: [DISCUSS] Release 4.2: General Topics

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

The problem of incomplete shutdown is very serious.  It can result in damaged 
and completely lost in-progress work, even though apparently saved, and other 
damage.  The whole problem of shutdown, Quickstarter, and failed auto-recovery 
is a big ball of snakes that is worthy of a maintenance release all on its own.

With regard to spell-checking, the usual symptom is that suddenly all words are 
redlined.  Having it stop checking probably goes unnoticed more often, as it 
did for Don.

With regard to spell-checking, there is a promise to provide a profile-fix tool 
for Windows, 
.  That is a bit buried 
(but look at the issue it is tied to). 

I will open a separate task for this now.

At some point, installation of such a tool should at least be part of the built 
distribution.

So there are three steps:

 1. Get the tool out there as something users can install and use.

 2. Incorporate the tool in our binary distributions.

 3. Fix the shut-down problems we have that are so overwhelming and so damaging 
to the work of our users.

Steps (1) will require QA work and L10N work in order to reach the greatest 
number of users.  English will only work for 45% of our users.  It should work 
better for end users than the instructions that are being provided repetitively 
each time someone stumbles on this and manages to report it.   

This is clearly a triage situation.  We need something now, we need something 
about best practices, such as having Quickstarter OFF by default at least on 
Windows, and also doing something about auto-recovery failures.  And we can't 
wait for laborious software fixes for which there is no foreseeable developer 
availability and then production of subsequent full-binary distributions.

Speaking of triage, the targeting of Windows reaches 87% of our users based on 
platform downloads.  Remedies there are assisted by the fact that cmd.exe (the 
console processor) and command-line utilities are available on all versions of 
Windows that AOO supports.  In addition, every install of AOO includes a 
functional version of Python in the OpenOffice 4 code.  Accomplishing the 
provision of side-car utilities for other platforms will depend on committers 
who are devoted to those platforms stepping forward.

 - Dennis

PS: The 4.1.2-patch1 Hotfix will roll to general distribution in the next 24-48 
hours.  We have English language covered and there is provision for more L10N 
localization.  However, the only one completed at this time is Nederland (nl, 
Dutch) for the Windows version.  A Deutsch (de, German) one is in the works.  
To get better coverage, the priority additional L10N-s should be French, 
Italian, and Spanish.  That gets us to 75% of the users by downloaded 
languages.  To get to 90% add Japanese, Russian, Polish, (Dutch), and 
Portuguese.  Chinese would be a great bonus and, of course, we would appreciate 
any other localizations that AOO enthusiasts and committers provide. 

> -Original Message-
> From: Don Lewis [mailto:truck...@apache.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 00:38
> To: ofarr...@iol.ie
> Cc: d...@openoffice.apache.org; q...@openoffice.apache.org;
> l10n@openoffice.apache.org
> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Release 4.2: General Topics
> 
> On 24 Aug, Rory O'Farrell wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:01:22 -0700 (PDT)
> > Don Lewis  wrote:
> 
> >> Someone should fix the broken spellcheck problem.  It generates a lot
> of
> >> complaints from our users.
> >>
> >
> > The "broken spellcheck problem" seems largely to be caused by over
> hasty close-down of the computer before cached files (both hardware and
> software caches) are properly written to disk.  User education is the
> answer - educate them to be patient in closedown and wait for disk
> activity to finish before power-off.
> 
> Maybe using fsync() to flush things out faster when shutting down the
> app and keeping a backup copy of the config would help avoid the
> problem.   We shouldn't just silently fail when something is corrupt.
> 
> I've even experienced this myself on my FreeBSD desktop which stays on
> 24x7 and has an UPS.  It took me quite a while to notice spellcheck
> wasn't working.  I just thought my spelling was unusually good ;-)
> 
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org


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