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:

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

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

And it was also bad in desktop Writer:

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:

• cool#13988 DOCX import: fix missing delete flag on deleted comments with ranges
• cool#13988 DOCX export: fix missing delete flag on deleted comments with ranges

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).

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:

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:

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:

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:

• PPTX export: fix missing non-first level list style for outline shapes
• sd doc model dump: allow invoking this from outside sd/ in a debugger
• sd doc model xml dump: show styles
• tdf#168559 PPTX imp: fix missing custom level list style for outline shapes
• tdf#168559 PPTX imp: fix missing list style for outline shapes on master pages
• tdf#89365 sd UI: fix transitioning from a numbered list to a bulleted list
• tdf#169275 sd UI: clear direct format when turning off bullet/num
• sd: extract FN_TRANSFORM_DOCUMENT_STRUCTURE handling to a new function
• sd, FuBulletAndPosition: avoid magic number for bullet toggle
• Related: tdf#89365 sd UI, from numbering to bullet: fix defaults

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).

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:

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:

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:

• tdf#169316 sw markdown import: add a TemplateURL parameter
• tdf#169316 sw markdown import, template: handle non-ODF formats as well
• cool#13468 sw markdown paste: add UNO command parameter to skip the detection
• Related: tdf#169251 sw markdown export: fix crash on OLE with no graphic

Online side:

• cool#13419 convert-to template option: handle multiple streams in ConvertToPartHandler
• cool#13419 convert-to template option: pass it to doc broker
• cool#13419 convert-to template option: pass it to the kit process
• cool#13419 convert-to template option: more strict param name, generalize filenames
• cool#13419 convert-to template option: add testcase
• cool#13468 PostMessage API: allow copying the current text selection

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).

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:

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:

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

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

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:

• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: allow accept/reject for fmt on ins/del
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix redo of accept for fmt on ins/del
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix redo of direct reject for format

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 (26.2).

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:

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

And now it's preserved:

This also works with code blocks.

Second, here is a document with lists:

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

And now they are preserved:

This also works with nested lists.

Third, here is a document with an image:

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

And now it's preserved:

This also works with embedded and anchored images.

Fourth, here is a document with a table:

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

And now it's preserved:

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:

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

And now it's preserved:

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:

• desktop lok, doc save: register .md for Markdown
• sw markdown export: handle code
• tdf#168152 sw markdown export: handle lists
• tdf#168172 sw markdown export: handle images
• tdf#167564 sw markdown export: handle tables
• sw markdown export: handle block quote
• tdf#168317 sw markdown export: handle code block
• sw markdown export: handle table cell adjustment
• tdf#168341 sw markdown filter: handle links on images
• sw markdown export: handle line breaks
• tdf#168446 sw markdown export: improve image name/description/title handling
• tdf#167564 sw markdown export: handle multi-para table cells
• tdf#167564 sw markdown export: handle nested table cells
• tdf#168617 sw markdown filter: map tasks to checkbox content controls and back
• sw markdown filter: import images with 'data:' URLs
• sw markdown filter: export non-linked inline images
• tdf#168662 sw markdown export: extract inline image export functions
• tdf#168662 sw markdown export: handle anchored images

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 (26.2).

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:

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

But now we track the old 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:

• sw: document DocumentRedlineManager
• sw: document IDocumentRedlineAccess
• sw doc model xml dump: show the item set of a format redline
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix redo of accept of ins-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle deleting a self ins-then-fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix redo of reject of del-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#167194 sw redline reinstate: fix handling of self-inserts
• tdf#167761 sw format redline: register the item set in the autostyle pool
• tdf#167761 sw format redline: implement ODF export
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char props: implement ODF import
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char style: implement DOCX import
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char style: implement ODF import
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char style: fix missing encode in ODF filter
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char style+direct: add ODT export
• tdf#167761 sw format redline, char style+direct: add ODT import

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 (26.2).

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:

And here is how it used to look like:

And here is the reference rendering:

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:

• tdf#167222 sw floattable: allow split of fly and its keep-together anchor text
• Related: tdf#167222 sw floattable: fix split of fly and its 'keep' anchor text
• Related: tdf#167222 sw floattable: fix split of fly and its heading text w/ ftn
• sw: fix assertion failure in SwFrameShell::Execute()
• Related: tdf#167222 sw floattable: fix split of fly and heading text fit check

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 (26.2).

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:

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

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

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:

• sw interdependent redlines: fix nPamEndtNI -> nPamEndNI typo
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: combine on reject of del-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix undo of reject of ins-then-del's del
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: add UI to create format inside insert
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: undo of creating an ins-then-fmt redline
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: redo of creating an ins-then-fmt redline
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix redo of reject of del-then-fmt's del
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix bad accept undo action for reject

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 (25.8).

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:

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:

Then a handling of more actions were missing:

1. DOCX import is now implemented.
2. ODT import is now implemented.
3. Accepting when you're inside AAA is now implemented: the insert is accepted for BBB but the format stays unchanged.
4. 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.
5. Accepting the BBB now correctly operates on the insert type, so the format type remains after accept.
6. If you accept BBB, now the surrounding AAA and CCC also get accepted as well, as expected.
7. Now if you reject BBB, then it gets removed from the document, since you rejected an insert.
8. 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:

Then again handling of some actions were missing:

1. DOCX import is now implemented.
2. ODT import is now implemented.
3. ODT export is now implemented.
4. Accepting AAA now correctly operates on the delete type of BBB.
5. Rejecting AAA now correctly operates on the delete type of BBB.
6. Accepting BBB now correctly works with the delete type.
7. 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:

• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix undo of del on top of ins
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle format on top of insert
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle accept of insert under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle reject of insert under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle accept of delete under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: fix DOCX export of delete under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle reject of delete under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle ODF import of insert under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle ODF export of delete under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle ODF import of delete under format
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle accept of ins-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: combine on accept of ins-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle reject of ins-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: combine on reject of ins-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle accept of del-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: combine on accept of del-then-fmt's fmt
• tdf#166319 sw interdependent redlines: handle reject of del-then-fmt's fmt

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 (25.8).

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:

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

And given a delete:

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

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:

• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: implement this for a single insert
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: handle inserts in selection
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: handle a single delete
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: handle a single rich delete
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: handle deletes in selection
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: simplify ReinstateRedlinesInSelection()
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add command state
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add a reinstate-and-next command
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add a reinstate-all command
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: avoid unwanted multi- or table selection
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: fix undo string for a single redline
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: fix undo count & string for multiple redlines
• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add to the context menu for text

Online side:

• cool#11357 sw redline reinstate: add UI for this

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 (25.8).