What is Miklos hacking - libreoffice

Improving deleted commented text ranges in Writer's DOCX filter

Miklos Vajna — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 08:42:44 +0100

If you have a commented text range, which gets deleted while track changes is on and you later save and load this with Writer's DOCX filter, that works now correctly.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

It was already possible to comment on text ranges. Comments were also supported inside deletes when track changes is enabled. These could be already exported to and imported from DOCX in Writer. But you could not combine these.

With the increasing popularity of commenting text ranges (rather than just inserting a comment with an anchor), not being able to combine these was annoying.

Results so far¶

Here is how a commented text range inside a delete from DOCX now looks like, note the semi-transparent comment hinting it's deleted:

Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, Collabora Online

As a side effect, this also fixes the behavior in desktop Writer, which crosses out deleted comments:

Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, desktop

In the past, the "is this deleted" property was not visible in the render result:

Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, Collabora Online, old bad state

And it was also bad in desktop Writer:

Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, desktop, old bad state

This required changes to both DOCX import and export: a comment could be deleted or could have an anchor which is a text range, but you couldn't have both.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

You can get a development edition of Collabora Online 25.04 and try it out yourself right now: try the development edition. Collabora intends to continue supporting and contributing to LibreOffice, the code is merged so we expect all of this work will be available in TDF's next release too (26.8).

Bullet improvements in Impress

Miklos Vajna — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:37:39 +0100

The bullet support in Impress got a couple of improvements recently, some of this is PPTX support and others are general UI improvements.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Impress as well.

Motivation¶

Probably the most simple presentations are just a couple of slides, each slide having a title shape and an outliner shape, containing some bullets, perhaps with some additional images. Images are just bitmaps, so let's focus on outliner shapes and their outliner / bullet styles.

What happens if you save these to PPTX and load it back? Can you toggle between a numbering and a bullet? Can you return to an outliner style after you had direct formatting for your bullet?

Results so far¶

The first case was about bullet editing of this document:

Outliner shape with 3 outliner styles

If you pressed enter at the end of 'First level', then pressed <tab> to promote the current paragraph to the second level, nothing happened. The reason for this was that our PPTX export was missing the list styles of shapes, except for the very first list style. And the same was missing on the import side, too. With this, not only the rendering of the bullets are OK, but also adding new paragraphs and using promoting / demoting to change levels work as expected.

The second case was about this document, where the second level had a numbering, not a bullet:

Outliner shape with a numbering on the second level

We only had UI to first toggle off a numbering to no numbering, then you could toggle on bullets. Now it's possible to do this change in one step.

The last case was about styles. Imagine that you had a master page with an outline shape and some reasonably looking configuration for the first and second levels as outline styles:

Outliner shape with two outline styles

Notice how the last paragraph has a slightly inconsistent formatting, due to direct formatting. Let's fix this.

Go to the end of the last bullet, which is currently not connected to an outline style, toggle bullets off and then toggle it on again. Now we clear direct formatting when we turn off the bullet, so next time you turn bullets on, it'll be again connected to the outline style's bullet configuration and the content will look better.

Note how this even improves consistency: Writer was behaving the same way already, when toggling bullets off and then toggle on again resulted in getting rid of previously applied unwanted direct formatting.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

You can get a development edition of Collabora Online 25.04 and try it out yourself right now: try the development edition. Collabora intends to continue supporting and contributing to LibreOffice, the code is merged so we expect the core of this work will be available in TDF's next release too (26.2).

Markdown import in Writer: the new template option

Miklos Vajna — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 09:35:36 +0100

Writer recently got a new markdown import option to take styles from a template, leading to much prettier output when converting markdown to PDF, DOCX or ODT.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the templating feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

A previous post mentioned recent improvements to the markdown import/export in Writer.

But if you convert some markdown to e.g. PDF, all the headings just have the default look, wouldn't it be nice to take your organization template and add colors and other formatting there, automatically?

Also, wouldn't it be nice if you could paste as markdown in COOL or copy the current selection as markdown? Which would enable all sorts of interesting use-cases, like using an external API to turn the selection into a summary or translating it to a different language.

Results so far¶

Here is a sample input markdown:

# heading 1

body text

Here is how it looks like if you template it using the core.git sw/qa/filter/md/data/template.docx sample:

PDF result: templated

curl invocation for this:

curl -k -F "data=@/path/to/test.md" -F "template=@/path/to/template.docx" -F "format=pdf" -o out.pdf https://localhost:9980/cool/convert-to

Or example desktop command-line:

soffice --infilter='Markdown:{"TemplateURL":{"type":"string","value":"./template.ott"}}' test.md

While it would look like this by default:

PDF result: default

The other part is the PostMessage API of COOL, if you want to copy and paste as markdown. What's newly possible:

Copy the current selection: set MessageId to Action_Copy and the value to {"Mimetype": "text/markdown;charset=utf-8"}
Paste at the current cursor position: set MessageId to Action_Paste and the value to something like {"Mimetype": "text/markdown;charset=utf-8", "Data": "foo _bar_ baz"}

You can read more about the PostMessage API in the COOL SDK.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Online side:

Want to start using this?¶

You can get a development edition of Collabora Online 25.04 and try it out yourself right now: try the development edition. Collabora intends to continue supporting and contributing to LibreOffice, the code is merged so we expect the core of this work will be available in TDF's next release too (26.2).

Interdependent tracked changes improvements in Writer, part 4: direct accept/reject

Miklos Vajna — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 08:11:48 +0100

Writer has some support for interdependent (or hierarchical) tracked changes: e.g. the case when you have a delete on top of an insert. See the third post for background.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

Interdependent changes mean that the UI shows one type of change on top of another change, e.g. formatting on top of insert. Writer knows the priority of each type, so in case you have an insert or delete change and on top of that you have a formatting, then the UI will look "through" the formatting and work on the underlying insert or delete when you navigate with your cursor to a position with multiple changes and you press Accept on the Review tab of the notebookbar.

Usually this is what you mean, but what if you want to work on the formatting at the top, directly? You can now open the Manage Changes dialog using the Manage button on the Review tab of the notebookbar and if you go to the formatting change row of the dialog, then pressing Accept there will accept the formatting change, not the insert or delete change. This is possible, because the dialog gives you a way to precisely select which tracked change you want to work with, even if a specific cursor position has multiple tracked changes.

Results so far¶

Here is a sample ins-then-format.docx document from the core.git testcases, the baseline has an insertion, and part of that is covered by an additional formatting change on top:

Interdependent tracked change: baseline

If you just go in the middle of the document and press Accept, that will work with the more important insert change, so the result looks like this:

Interdependent tracked change: default accept result

But now you can also open the Manage Changes dialog, to be more specific by directly selecting the formatting change:

Interdependent tracked change: direct accept via the dialog

And when you accept the formatting change directly, the result will be just the insert change:

Interdependent tracked change: direct accept result

You can save and load the results in both DOCX and ODT, as usual.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

Markdown import/export in Writer

Miklos Vajna — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 08:13:55 +0200

Writer recently got a Markdown import & export filter and there were a number of improvements to that.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

Ujjawal Kumar contributed a markdown import to Writer, as part of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) this summer. Mike Kaganski of Collabora also created a minimal markdown export in Writer. I looked at the feature differences between the two, and filled in various gaps in the markdown export. I also added a few general markdown import/export improvements relevant for normal Writer documents, like embedded image support.

Results so far¶

Here is a sample case of a document using inline code spans:

Code span: baseline

Exporting this to markdown & loading back to Writer, the code span was lost:

Code span: old result

And now it's preserved:

Code span: new result

This also works with code blocks.

Second, here is a document with lists:

Lists: baseline

Exporting this to markdown & loading back to Writer, the lists were lost:

Lists: old result

And now they are preserved:

Lists: new result

This also works with nested lists.

Third, here is a document with an image:

Image: baseline

Exporting this to markdown & loading back to Writer, the image was lost:

Image: old result

And now it's preserved:

Image: new result

This also works with embedded and anchored images.

Fourth, here is a document with a table:

Table: baseline

Exporting this to markdown & loading back to Writer, the table was lost:

Table: old result

And now it's preserved:

Table: new result

This also works with table alignments and nested tables (to the extent the markdown markup allows that).

Fifth, here is a document with a quote block:

Quote: baseline

Exporting this to markdown & loading back to Writer, the quote's paragraph indentation was lost:

Quote: old result

And now it's preserved:

Quote: new result

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

Interdependent tracked changes improvements in Writer, part 3

Miklos Vajna — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 08:23:48 +0200

Writer has some support for interdependent (or hierarchical) tracked changes: e.g. the case when you have a delete on top of an insert. See the second post for background.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

With the already mentioned improvements in place, the area of format redlines with character style or direct formatting changes were still lacking: Writer's original model here was just marking a text range as "formatted" and then either accept the format redline as-is, or reject reverting back to the paragraph style (default formatting), losing the old character style or old direct formatting.

Results so far¶

Here is a sample case of a document where the old character style is Strong (~bold) and the font size is 24pt, while the new character style is Quote (~italic) and the font size is 36pt. The rest of the document uses no specific character styles and has the font size of 12pt:

Interdependent tracked change: improved format, after document load

Rejecting that format redline resulted in just the defaults, i.e. no character style and 12pt font size:

Interdependent tracked change: old reject, lost character style / direct format

But now we track the old character style & direct format:

Interdependent tracked change: new reject, handled character style / direct format

This required changes in the DOCX import, ODF import and ODF export, too.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

Multi-page floating tables in Writer: keep together or not

Miklos Vajna — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:14:19 +0200

This post is part of a series to describe how Writer now gets a feature to handle tables that are both floating and span over multiple pages.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but is useful on the desktop as well. See the 11th post for the previous part.

Motivation¶

Previous posts described the hardest part of multi-page floating tables: making sure that text can wrap around them and they can split across pages. In this part, we'll look at a conflicting requirement. On one hand, headings want their text to not split across pages (and shapes anchored into paragraphs are considered part of the paragraph, too). On the other hand, it should be OK to have a floating table at the bottom of a page and the following heading to go to the next page.

It turns out, Writer gave "keep together" a priority, while Word gave "floating tables are OK to split to a previous page" a priority.

Note that if you have a shape (e.g. a triangle) and not a floating table, then both Word and Writer prevents the move of that shape to a previous page (if the shape is anchored in a heading); this difference was there just for floating tables.

Results so far¶

Here is how the tdf#167222 bugdoc looks like now in Writer:

Floating table, followed by heading: new Writer render

And here is how it used to look like:

Floating table, followed by heading: old Writer render

And here is the reference rendering:

Floating table, followed by heading: reference render

This means that we leave layout for shapes unchanged in general: shapes anchored in headings are still considered to be part of headings and don't split. But for floating tables, we now allow them to split and use space at a previous page if they fit there.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes:

Want to start using this?¶

Interdependent tracked changes improvements in Writer, part 2

Miklos Vajna — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:43:10 +0200

Writer has some support for interdependent (or hierarchical) tracked changes: e.g. the case when you have a delete on top of an insert. See the first post for background.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

With the already mentioned improvements in place, a few areas were still lacking: we didn't have UI for all cases where the DOCX import was possible already; combining tracked changes (redlines) were not complete (so you don't have to reject all parts of a logical redline one by one) and some of the undo/redo code didn't work as expected.

Results so far¶

Here is a sample case where the UI was missing to create something that was possible to import from DOCX: a format redline on top of an insert redline.

If you had a document with an insert:

Interdependent tracked change: just insert

And you selected BBB to mark those characters as bold, we just updated the existing insert redline to be bold:

Interdependent tracked change: old, format is not tracked separately

But now we track a format change on top of the insert separately:

Interdependent tracked change: new, format is tracked separately

This is also visible if you open the track changes dialog, which explains that now you have part of the insert redline covered by a format redline:

Interdependent tracked change: UI dialog now showing multiple redlines

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

Interdependent tracked changes improvements in Writer

Miklos Vajna — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 13:54:44 +0200

Writer has some support for interdependent (or hierarchical) tracked changes: e.g. the case when you have a delete on top of an insert. While there were some working cases, handling of many combinations were missing. I started to make systematic improvements in this area in the recent past, this post gives you an overview what's done so far.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

DOCX files in Word can often have overlapping tracked changes: Writer tries to split these up to make sure there is only one tracked change under the cursor at the same time. Still, it's possible that you have a tracked change with multiple types: e.g. a delete on top of an insert.

The focus in on 3 combinations which appear in DOCX files a lot: "insert, then delete", "insert, then format" and "delete, then format".

This mostly affects the UI and import/export filters of ODT and DOCX.

Results so far¶

Given an insert, then delete:

Interdependent tracked change: insert, then delete

Most operations worked nicely here, but in case your cursor was in the middle of AAA and you did a reject, followed by an undo, proper handling of that was missing, now implemented.

But then given an insert, then a format:

Interdependent tracked change: insert, then format

Then a handling of more actions were missing:

DOCX import is now implemented.
ODT import is now implemented.
Accepting when you're inside AAA is now implemented: the insert is accepted for BBB but the format stays unchanged.
Rejecting when you're inside AAA is now implemented: the insert is rejected and BBB is also removed, together with the format on top of it.
Accepting the BBB now correctly operates on the insert type, so the format type remains after accept.
If you accept BBB, now the surrounding AAA and CCC also get accepted as well, as expected.
Now if you reject BBB, then it gets removed from the document, since you rejected an insert.
When you reject BBB, the surrounding AAA and CCC also get rejected.

The combined implementation of these should give you a smooth feeling in case you're used to how Word works: if there is a format redline combined with an insert, then the operations act on the insert type, and format is only accepted/rejected when there is no insert "under" the format.

Similarly: it's a bit of an implementation detail that Writer splits redlines on DOCX import: so if you e.g. accept AAA then we combine that with BBB and CCC when it makes sense, so you need to click a lot less.

Finally, given a delete, then a format:

Interdependent tracked change: delete, then format

Then again handling of some actions were missing:

DOCX import is now implemented.
ODT import is now implemented.
ODT export is now implemented.
Accepting AAA now correctly operates on the delete type of BBB.
Rejecting AAA now correctly operates on the delete type of BBB.
Accepting BBB now correctly works with the delete type.
Accepting BBB now correctly tries to also accept AAA and CCC, too.

The current state is not yet complete, but it's a big improvement over what we had in the past, which was mostly focusing on just "insert, then delete".

You may wonder what about some other cases: if you insert some content with change tracking, that always creates a new tracked change, so "insert" is never on top of something else. Similarly, format is always on top of something. Finally the same type is never on top of itself.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Want to start using this?¶

Reinstate for tracked changes in Writer

Miklos Vajna — Thu, 08 May 2025 08:44:48 +0200

Writer has the concept of rejecting tracked changes: if a proposed insertion or deletion is not wanted, then one can reject it to push back on the proposal. So far such an action left no trace in the document, which is sometimes not wanted. Calling reinstate on a change behaves like reject, but with history: it reinstates the original state, with the rejected change preserved in the document.

This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

Motivation¶

When Alice works on a document to insert e.g. new conditions for a contract, then perhaps Bob is not happy with the proposal. But just rejecting the change "silently" would not be polite: the tracked change then disappears, so possibly Alice thinks it was accepted and Bob didn't communicate the pushback explicitly in the resulting document, either.

Reinstate is meant to improve this interaction: if an insert is reinstated, then an explicit delete is created on top of the insert, so Alice can see that Bob was not happy with the proposal. Or in case Alice proposed a delete, Bob can reinstate that by adding the same content again to the document, without typing the text manually after the delete.

This is a UI feature: the resulting model still only contains inserts and deletes, so it works even with DOCX files.

Results so far¶

Given an insert:

Reinstate: an insert

Now you can easily create a delete on top of the insert:

Reinstate: a reinstated insert

And given a delete:

Reinstate: a delete

Now you can easily create an insert right after the delete, preserving complex content:

Reinstate: a reinstated delete

As you can see, this creates the opposite of the original change as a new tracked change, so it will in the end still reject the change, but without deleting the original change.

How is this implemented?¶

If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)

As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:

Online side:

cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add UI for this