Bug 120006 - Improvement of Document converter
Summary: Improvement of Document converter
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Format-Filters
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2018-09-20 10:56 UTC by Roman Kuznetsov
Modified: 2022-01-25 23:36 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Pencil mockup 1. Improvement of Document converter (34.07 KB, application/octet-stream)
2018-09-20 10:58 UTC, Roman Kuznetsov
Details
PNG Mockup 1 (23.13 KB, image/png)
2018-09-20 10:58 UTC, Roman Kuznetsov
Details
Modified mockup (63.20 KB, image/png)
2018-09-20 14:58 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details
Pencil source (21.71 KB, application/x-evolus-pencil)
2018-09-20 14:58 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details
Bulk converter UI example taken from https://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkconvertulo/ (27.74 KB, image/png)
2022-01-25 23:11 UTC, Edmund Laugasson
Details

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Description Roman Kuznetsov 2018-09-20 10:56:08 UTC
Description:
Improvement of Document converter.

We have beautiful feature the Document converter (File->Wizards->Document Converter) to convert only MSOffice documents to ODF format.
And LibreOffice can convert many foramts to many formats also (for example odt->pdf). But we should use command line and option "--convert-to" to convert files to another formats.
Would be cool have GUI for converting of all types of files.
We can just improve existing dialogue Document converter for it.

See mockup in attach

Steps to Reproduce:
1. I offer to improve existing dialogue Document converter
2.
3.

Actual Results:
for pocket converting documents into another type we should use command line and option --convert-to

Expected Results:
for pocket converting documents into another type we'll can use some GUI


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Comment 1 Roman Kuznetsov 2018-09-20 10:58:24 UTC
Created attachment 145062 [details]
Pencil mockup 1. Improvement of Document converter
Comment 2 Roman Kuznetsov 2018-09-20 10:58:45 UTC
Created attachment 145063 [details]
PNG Mockup 1
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2018-09-20 14:58:09 UTC
Created attachment 145068 [details]
Modified mockup

Would organize it a little bit differently. The "Select type" single selection is different to the current three checkboxes, didn't change this yet. Output of aka printing out as PDF is IMHO a different procedure than converting, so I removed this dropdown. And finally showing the progress above the start button is weird. Could imagine a dialog that contains the log - maybe we add there the option to save.

All together I'm a bit sad of loosing the wizard like back/forth steps. Not that options are arranged perfectly today.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2018-09-20 14:58:32 UTC
Created attachment 145069 [details]
Pencil source
Comment 5 Roman Kuznetsov 2018-09-20 16:35:35 UTC
hm...
Heiko...I mean, that we should allow convert ANY file format to any file format. I want make GUI for comand line option --convert-to. I just wanted use for improvement existing dialogue =(

I see that you didn't understand me, because I wrote not clear what do I want =(
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2018-10-04 15:01:06 UTC
We discussed the idea of reworking the dialog in the design meeting and welcome it. The wizard is in fact not needed.
Comment 7 Mike Kaganski 2018-10-05 12:39:49 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> Created attachment 145068 [details]
> Modified mockup
> 
> Output of aka printing out as PDF is IMHO a different procedure than
> converting, so I removed this dropdown.

I believe that ability to choose resulting type is important thing, because this in effect provides a GUI to the --convert-to functionality currently only available as CLI (which is what description is about); we can not only "print to PDF", but also mass-convert *to* foreign formats. The resulting filetype selector could contain a special "ODF" element selected by default, which would allow to automatically detect resulting ODF type based on input filetype (as implied by your mockup) - but allowing to be flexible here makes this much wider-useful feature.

I also believe that radiobuttons are good to keep here, to make clear that the options are mutually exclusive (when there's nothing in user mask, it's unclear that filling the mask implies ignoring the drop-down).
Comment 8 Edmund Laugasson 2022-01-25 23:06:46 UTC
Also deeply waiting CLI features to be implemented in GUI of LibreOffice Document Converter. This would be one of the killer features, especially in case of migrating to LibreOffice. So, please help people migrate to LibreOffice and add CLI features into LibreOffice Document Converter GUI!

Actually could not get working a bash script with line:
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf *.* $input --outdir $output

I defined variables between quotes as path contained spaces.
input="$HOME/path with spaces/docx/"
output="$HOME/path with spaces/pdf/"

Only way I could convert:
cd "$HOME/path with spaces/docx/"
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf *.*
mv *.pdf "$HOME/path with spaces/pdf/"

So, improving also CLI version of converting would be really appreciated. There is one report #133932 to improve CLI help, but functionality itself needs to be improved also.

I add some links to already existing, but it seems abandoned converter examples:
* https://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkconvertulo/
* https://www.bitrecover.com/blog/libreoffice-to-word-converter-software/
Comment 9 Edmund Laugasson 2022-01-25 23:11:40 UTC
Created attachment 177793 [details]
Bulk converter UI example taken from https://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkconvertulo/

Has good options and parameters changing features. Definitely should be capable with paths containing spaces, special symbols that could be possibly ever used.
Comment 10 Edmund Laugasson 2022-01-25 23:24:15 UTC
As https://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkconvertulo/ has MIT licence, its source code could be used also to take some hints how to solve it in LibreOffice Document Converter UI. I hope as existing software source code is already available, this could help developers to save time and take advantage from that already existing source code.

LibreOffice shouldn't be targeted to tech savvy people, when we talking about bulk conversion of files. This especially happens in case of migration and then users are stuck as UI is not capable for proper conversion. Usually nobody novice LibreOffice users will not look into CLI to hack some parameters there....

Then it is no wonder, that gossip spreads, that free software needs "square brain" to hack CLI and forget GUI... This scares away most users and puts a lot of pressure on LibreOffice's popularity....

So, I truly encourage you, dear developers, consider to include CLI parameters into Document Converter UI! Be Force with you!

Current feature request has been reported already more than 3 years ago. Still no hope to get CLI features implemented in GUI?
Comment 11 Edmund Laugasson 2022-01-25 23:36:16 UTC
To be honest, Document Converter can be used already directly from LibreOffice UI. There is no need to open Writer or any other component. Certainly the Document Converter can be opened also, when any LibreOffice component is already opened. So, I changed component to UI.