Bug 141302 - PARAGRAPH: Seams in text borders in Writer
Summary: PARAGRAPH: Seams in text borders in Writer
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.4.0 release
Hardware: All All
: medium minor
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: preBibisect, regression
Depends on:
Blocks: Paragraph-Borders
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2021-03-28 18:25 UTC by Panos Stokas
Modified: 2024-08-04 10:01 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Paragraph border seams, including a seamless screenshot of LO 3.3.4 (86.54 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2021-03-28 18:27 UTC, Panos Stokas
Details
Shows seams in borders without using Area fill (33.31 KB, application/zip)
2021-04-14 05:51 UTC, Panos Stokas
Details
Text border seams in Writer and PDF export screenshot (193.97 KB, image/png)
2023-05-20 18:35 UTC, Panos Stokas
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Panos Stokas 2021-03-28 18:25:43 UTC
Description:
Since version LO 3.4, borders in Writer have seams. Depending on your document, these may range from invisible to very annoying.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a few empty paragraph lines
2. Select all of them, Format > Paragraph
3. Set Area to black color
4. Set Borders to all 4 visible, color White and width to 5 pt.
5. Uncheck "Merge with next paragraph" (this is optional, but makes it easier to spot the bug)

Actual Results:
Borders have seams and color visibly gets through them. This makes them look broken.

Expected Results:
Borders should be seamless, like the ones shown in version 3.3.4 (screenshots provided below)


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes



Additional Info:
Skia has been disabled/enabled for testing. Also tested against LO 7.1.2.2 and the latest 7.2 nightly.

This is a very annoying issue because it affects the main purpose of LibreOffice which is the creation of good looking documents.

It's the reason I have to keep my documents compatible to ODF 1.2 because I can only print them from OpenOffice to guarantee an acceptable output.

Related bugs: 33281, 38635, 118937. The first report was particular discouraging because it would seem that the bug was acknowledged but was still marked as fixed.
Comment 1 Panos Stokas 2021-03-28 18:27:23 UTC
Created attachment 170796 [details]
Paragraph border seams, including a seamless screenshot of LO 3.3.4
Comment 2 Dieter 2021-04-13 06:43:13 UTC
I confirm it with

Version: 7.2.0.0.alpha0+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 807d059d99e7b99fe45a712428befa17ffa44858
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19042; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: de-DE (de_DE); UI: en-GB
Calc: CL

This  happens only, if you choose a colour for the area. As far as I can see, a thin line is already visible, if you fill area with colour. Adding borders make them more visible. Printing is fine.
So I've changed bug summary and focused on area fill. Panos, I hope you agree.

Steps to reproduce
1. Mark some empty paragraphs in a document
2. Format > Paragraph > Area > Colour
3. Choose a colour (for example black > O.K.

Result: thin lines are visible between paragraphs (shouldn't)
Comment 3 Panos Stokas 2021-04-14 05:51:52 UTC
Created attachment 171178 [details]
Shows seams in borders without using Area fill

@Dieter,

The bug isn't caused by step "3. Set Area to black color" but rather by the seams between the borders. Area fill was used to easily inspect the problem.

I'm attaching a sample that doesn't use any fill color. It's obviously harder to spot the problem in this one, but it's still just as unacceptable for publishing.

Printing is affected too, depending on the printer and the settings. It's visible on one of my inkject printers and I'll try it on my laser at office (when I can get there due to Covid restrictions) and report back.

PDF printing (including LO's PDF export) are most seriously affected. Whenever I use paragraph borders, I almost always have to use OpenOffice to export them to PDF prior to submitting them.

The original title was more accurate but it's good to see the issue being accepted.
Comment 4 Dieter 2021-04-18 12:11:31 UTC
Panos, thanks for your explanation. Now I can confirm the problem in odt-file. But I can't confirm the problem in PDF. PDF in your attachment looks fine for me (with Adobe Acrobat reader). Same result with PDF created with directexport to PDF in LO.
Comment 5 Panos Stokas 2021-05-18 05:36:30 UTC
Hi Dieter,

I've uploaded a PDF screenshot here: https://i.imgur.com/9UG3TR4.png

It really depends on the reader's (or printer's) interpolation method. In both Foxit and Sumatra PDF, the seams are visible. In my Canon inkjet they are visible. In my HP laser, they aren't.
Comment 6 QA Administrators 2023-05-19 03:17:13 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 7 Panos Stokas 2023-05-20 18:35:35 UTC
Created attachment 187413 [details]
Text border seams in Writer and PDF export screenshot

Shows that text border seams are clearly visible in PDF. Looks the same in Chrome PDF reader, Foxit and Sumatra.
Comment 8 Panos Stokas 2023-05-20 18:42:15 UTC
Bug still present in Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha1+

This is really an ancient LibreOffice regression that I reported in bug 38635. This bug was closed, marked as FIXED despite my objections. It was never fixed. It keeps resurfacing in bugs such as bug 118937.

I've restored the original title since I have clarified in an earlier comment that the bug isn't related to the background fill color but in the way borders are connected in version 3.4.

I've learned to live with this bug by making sure that my documents are compatible with OpenOffice so that I can use OpenOffice to print them because I use text borders a lot.
Comment 9 BogdanB 2023-09-23 14:38:36 UTC
In the bug tdf#38635 seems to be some code pointers. Michael Stahl made some improvements there, but it seems this can still be improved.