Peter Hillier-Brook wrote: > I recently reported a Priority 2 bug in the OO.o 1.9.104 beta release > (Issue #49865), occasioned by the severe loss of data in files > containing several versions of a document. The problem was provoked by > the conversion process to version 2 file formats (.sxw to .odt and .sxc > to .ods) in that all versions of the document but the current one were > discarded. > > Well and good so far, but the response to the issue was surprising in > its MS-like quality - it's not a bug, it's a feature!
I wouldn't tell that MS-like quality. Did you ever get a response from MS at all? :-) OK, seriously now. >From a *technical* POV the current behavior *is* a feature, though it is not adequate for the use case that didn't exist when the feature was designed. At that point in time it appeared logical that versions belong to the source document, not to the copy and so they are intentionally removed. If you think about document converters you are right if you call this design wrong - I agree. But it's still a feature change, not a bug fix from a technical POV. This classification into "feature/enhancement" and "defect" does not tell anything about the severity of the isse, it's only a technical classification. You could also call it a "design bug", but that category doesn't exist in IZ, and IMHO "enhancement/feature" is a better match to this non existing category than "defect". But I don't think that this classification is the problem, if the "feature change" was accepted for OOo2.0 you wouldn't care, would you? OTOH even if you call it a "defect" this doesn't give it a higher probability to become fixed for OOo2.0 because it doesn't make the fix easier and less risky. The problem is that you can't just revert the behavior and always copy versions when a document copy is created by "SaveAs". This can create other severe problems (privacy issues because unwanted data rushes into copies of documents - you remember all the embarrassing cases where unwanted metadata or document history data was accidently stored to published MS documents?). So a new design of the whole feature is necessary. If a document converter should preserve the file "as is" we need to change more than only the versions, also metadata needs to be preserved. It is definitely too late to create a new design for this feature in the OOo2.0 release. If a workaround is possible instead that allows to customize the behavior via API is currently under investigation. That doesn't make a feature redesign obsolete but can avoid at least a data loss in the document converter use case. Wether we can do something for OOo2.0 depends on the feasibility of the mentioned workaround. Best regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer - OpenOffice.org Application Framework Project Lead Please reply to the list only, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a spam sink. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
