Bug 166992 - Improve reporting of errors in opening (Flat) ODF files
Summary: Improve reporting of errors in opening (Flat) ODF files
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.0.0 alpha0+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: ODF ODF-Flat
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-06-13 13:04 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-06-13 15:05 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
LO 26.2 Start Center with an FODT file open failure message box (127.83 KB, image/png)
2025-06-13 13:04 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details
A sample ODS with a duplicating attribute (8.79 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
2025-06-13 15:05 UTC, Mike Kaganski
Details

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2025-06-13 13:04:10 UTC
Created attachment 201252 [details]
LO 26.2 Start Center with an FODT file open failure message box

If you try opening an (F)ODT file, and it has a syntax error which LO does not auto-recover from - it brings up a  message box saying:

  General Error
  General input/output error


this is poor behavior, because:

1. It's not true. That is, there was no "general error". There wasn't even an error in the input filter. It's the _file_ that had an error (or content we were unable to parse).
2. It doesn't say in which input file the error occurred.
3. It doesn't say where in the input file the error occurred.
4. It doesn't say during what action/operation the error occurred.
5. It doesn't say what was erroneous (which it could say; there's a description of the error printed to stdout)
6. It's a very small message box, at first glance it's barely noticeable after coming up (screenshot to follow)
7. There is no graphic in this message box, e.g. something indicating that it's an error (although TBH that's a more general problem with message boxes for errors).
Comment 1 Mike Kaganski 2025-06-13 14:18:58 UTC
Note that it's different for non-flat ODF.
Comment 2 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-06-13 14:52:52 UTC
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #1)
> Note that it's different for non-flat ODF.

You mean, that it involves specifying which file within the ZIP, or saying that it's the decompression?
Comment 3 Mike Kaganski 2025-06-13 15:05:12 UTC
Created attachment 201255 [details]
A sample ODS with a duplicating attribute