Bug 123457 - Using multiple words in quotes (e.g. "user data") in Search Term of Help window's Find tab causes LibreOffice to crash (Not Responding msg)
Summary: Using multiple words in quotes (e.g. "user data") in Search Term of Help wind...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Documentation (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.1.4.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Windows (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2019-02-14 00:15 UTC by wct
Modified: 2019-04-04 16:29 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description wct 2019-02-14 00:15:50 UTC
Description:
Both the Help window and the app (Writer, Calc, whatever) crash, if multiple words, separated by spaces, and within quotation marks, are entered into the 'Search term' field of the Find tab in the LibreOffice Help window.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Open Writer or Calc (possibly others, but only checked these two)
2) Press F1 or open Help > LibreOffice Help from the menu
3) In the Find tab, for the Search Term text input, enter multiple words in quotes, e.g. "user data" (include the quotation marks)
4) Press Enter or click the Find button

Expected result: 
- The help system should search for the quoted words verbatim, i.e. next to each other as listed, e.g. any articles which contain the word 'user' immediately followed by the word 'data' (in this example, such articles actually do exist).
- At the very least, this should not cause a crash of any part of LibreOffice. At worst, it might report that such a feature is not implemented, or that quotes are not allowed in the Find tab.

Actual result: 
- The help system's window crashes: it shows '(Not Responding)' appended to the window title, and the cursor changes to a waiting cursor (rotating blue circle on Windows). Not only that, but the application (Writer, Calc, whatever) also crashes with the same symptoms.
- In the Windows Task Manager, under the Processes tab, the LibreOffice group -- which contains two sub-tasks, one for "LibreOffice Help" and another for the app -- has a Status of Not Responding. Ditto for the two sub-tasks.
- In the Task Manager Details tab, the process called 'soffice.bin' has Status of Not Responding. However, the process called 'soffice.exe' has Status of Running, however CPU usage is 0 and memory usage is relatively small.
- The only solution appears to be to manually terminate the LibreOffice tasks/process ('End task' in Task Manager, or try to close via upper-right red X button on one of the windows, which triggers Windows' default 'End task' on 'Not Responding' windows)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Writer or Calc (possibly others, but only checked these two)
2. Press F1 or open Help > LibreOffice Help from the menu
3. In the Find tab, for the Search Term text input, enter multiple words in quotes, e.g. "user data" (include the quotation marks)
4. Press Enter or click the Find button

Actual Results:
- The help system's window crashes: it shows '(Not Responding)' appended to the window title, and the cursor changes to a waiting cursor (rotating blue circle on Windows). Not only that, but the application (Writer, Calc, whatever) also crashes with the same symptoms.
- In the Windows Task Manager, under the Processes tab, the LibreOffice group -- which contains two sub-tasks, one for "LibreOffice Help" and another for the app -- has a Status of Not Responding. Ditto for the two sub-tasks.
- In the Task Manager Details tab, the process called 'soffice.bin' has Status of Not Responding. However, the process called 'soffice.exe' has Status of Running, however CPU usage is 0 and memory usage is relatively small.
- The only solution appears to be to manually terminate the LibreOffice tasks/process ('End task' in Task Manager, or try to close via upper-right red X button on one of the windows, which triggers Windows' default 'End task' on 'Not Responding' windows)

Expected Results:
- The help system should search for the quoted words verbatim, i.e. next to each other as listed, e.g. any articles which contain the word 'user' immediately followed by the word 'data' (in this example, such articles actually do exist).
- At the very least, this should not cause a crash of any part of LibreOffice. At worst, it might report that such a feature is not implemented, or that quotes are not allowed in the Find tab.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
I tried various quotations, all of which were actual text in the help files, which I was directly looking at, just to test if any of them would work. Searching for single words in quotes, such as "features" gave a 'No topics found.' pop-up message, even though the word features (though without surrounding quotes) definitely appears in the help.

But any search with multiple words, such as "writer features", causes a full crash.

Using double-quotes (the '"' symbol) in a search to search for "verbatim text" is an ubiquitous search feature, e.g. in Google and just about any other major search engine. 

At the very least, it should be expected that people might try it, and it should not crash anything.
Comment 1 wct 2019-02-14 00:24:06 UTC
Also, it might be a good idea to have the Help window and the applications (Writer, Calc, whatever) run in separate processes, so that if the Help window crashes, it doesn't cause the app to crash as well.

Either that, or have a wide-scope, general error handling 'catch' which protects the main application from crashing, regardless of what 'exceptions' or errors or whatever occur in the Help window/component.
Comment 2 Buovjaga 2019-03-21 21:11:13 UTC
When you talk about the "Help system window", are you referring to the old help and not this web help: http://help.libreoffice.org/ ?

Such searches certainly do not crash Firefox browser either with 6.1 or 6.2 web help.
Comment 3 wct 2019-04-03 19:56:46 UTC
As listed in step 2 of the steps to reproduce, I'm referring to the "LibreOffice Help" window which opens from a LibreOffice application (e.g. Writer) when you press the F1 key or go to the menu [Help > LibreOffice Help]. I am not referring to online help nor any web browser.
Comment 4 Buovjaga 2019-04-03 21:03:53 UTC
Thank you for the report.

The old help system has been removed. 6.2 ships with offline web help. I will close this.
Comment 5 wct 2019-04-04 16:28:47 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #4)
> The old help system has been removed. 6.2 ships with offline web help. I
> will close this.

Wow, that sucks. So there will be no offline help?
Comment 6 wct 2019-04-04 16:29:56 UTC
(In reply to wct from comment #5)
> Wow, that sucks. So there will be no offline help?

Oops, sorry I misread what you wrote! I see that you said offline web help will be included. Thanks!