https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86988
Bug ID: 86988
Summary: RSIDs should not be created unless enabled in Options
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 4.2.0.4 release
Hardware: Other
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: medium
Component: Writer
Assignee: libreoffice-bugs@lists.freedesktop.org
Reporter: jim.av...@gmail.com
Each trival text edit creates a new ODF text span with a style which does
nothing but give an RSID, even though changes are not recorded and "Use RSID"
is not checked in Tools->Options->Writer->Comparison.
Even trivial spelling corrections break words into multiple spans, which makes
the resulting ODF file virtually unreadable to either humans or most other
software. For example, I use Perl and ODF::lpOD to search for place-holder
strings in a "skeleton" file and replace them with real content. But the
place-holder strings can't be found unless they are stored in a single span.
The RSID problem makes it almost impossible to use Libre Office to edit the
skeleton doc.
Please see bug 52028 for more details and some test cases.
(that bug reported a font-kerning issue which has since been fixed, but the
part about uncontrollable ODF fragmentation remains).
I'd like to echo the sentiments of the reporter of that other bug, who said
"this bug unnecessarily increases the complexity and size of .odt files, making
the contents unnecessarily hard to read and parse, which is IMHO against the
philosophy behind the ODF file format specification -- unlike Microsoft's
strange Office 2007 XML format (.docx etc.), which may be intentionally complex
to make parsing difficult for foreign software, the ODF file format was
designed to be as simple as possible, to make it easy to write parsers and even
to allow human beings to read the XML code directly. This is counteracted by
this bug."
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:
1. Don't generate RSID spans unless "Use RSID" is checked in
ools->Options->Writer->Comparison (which currently requires selecting by-char
or by-word comparison mode) AND edit->Changes->Record is checked.
OR
2. Provide a new command ("Simplify ODF" or somesuch) which removes all RSIDs
and then removes all empty spans. This could be used by people who need to
generate ODF files which can be parsed by other software. I predict that if
this command is implemented, someone will want a static option to do it always;
one place for that would be a Save-As option.
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