Description: When I write a complex document, it is very handy to see how long I've edited the document in total, especially when the editing sessions span multiple days. When I forget to close the document, for example over night, when not shutting down the notebook but only closing the lid to put it to sleep too, the counter always continues to count even without editing anything for hours and adds this non-usage time as editing time on next save. It's not unusual to work like that. I would like to change this time tracking behaviour to something like a new option in settings for a user-defined value, that results (when not empty) in ignoring the timespan longer than that value between editing changes being counted? Example: I set this value to 1h, that results in not adding up the counter between last saving the document before going to sleep and continuing editing the (still opened) document the next day if longer than the value being defined. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create new document, save it, but don't close it. 2. Do something else without touching the document and come back later (in my case very much later, like over night). 3. When returning enter anything in the still opened document and save again. 4. Look at the total editing time in the document properties. 5. Continue as long as you want. Actual Results: The timespan of the document being open (for example 72h, or 3 days, even when the computer was put to sleep for hours in between making changes for seconds). Expected Results: Nothing else than always, since the proposed functionality does not exist yet. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: Yes Additional Info: Showing a more realistic timespan that echoes "real" editing time, not just the time in the example described, maybe e few Minutes instead of 3 days. Version: 25.8.4.2 (AARCH64) Build ID: 290daaa01b999472f0c7a3890eb6a550fd74c6df CPU threads: 8; OS: macOS 26.2; UI render: default; VCL: osx Locale: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); UI: de-DE Calc: threaded
doubtfully, but let's ask UX-team too
Reading should also count as working. And we cannot track your eye movements :-) Seriously, I think this could be better realized per macro. Trigger the counter on some interaction and stop if after a certain amount of time no interaction happens. What do you think, Neil?
I think it would be possible to implement the idea as an extension. In Python, you can get access to the editing duration in seconds like this: doc = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument() props = doc.getDocumentProperties() duration = props.EditingDuration You can get access to the last save time in props.ModificationDate. You could listen for whenever a document is saved by calling addDocumentEventListener on theGlobalEventBroadcaster and looking at at the “OnSave” events. Then whenever the current time minus the ModificationDate is greater than an hour you could update the EditingDuration to remove the difference. However, it seems to me like we could just improve this in general in LibreOffice. Instead of tracking key presses or eye tracking, maybe we could just make it not count time when the document window doesn’t have focus. The window is likely to get a lose-focus event whenever the screensaver comes on so maybe that would be enough to fix Axel’s use case of not counting time when he is away from the computer. For reference, in the LO code the editing time is updated whenever the document is saved in SfxObjectShell::UpdateTime_Impl. See also bug#88131
+1 Seems reasonable and I like Neil's idea of tracking the occurrence and duration of focus events as basis to update the document Properties: "Total editing time". Would be a better metric for "work" being done on the document than simply the delta between opening/closing on save. If the focus events stop, then stop the timer... don't count as "work" when it's just sitting idle. Tally it up and append to the editing timer. Fun stuff.
reading the comments, seems to be a consensus the bugreport is valid. setting to New.
(In reply to raal from comment #5) > reading the comments, seems to be a consensus the bugreport is valid. > setting to New. But not accepted as inbuilt feature. Back to unconfirmed
Would opt for "Best implemented as extension" – needs for time tracking are probably more diverse than we can cover with a simple property of the document, anyway.
I am not sure how I feel about this. So, let me raise concerns/ruminations/questions for now. * I do not see why it is "very handy" to see how long I've edited a document for. I suppose some people may like micro-measuring the time they devote to things, but this is not obvious, to me at least. * Tracking the time spent interacting with application or with a window of some application is something that, to a great extent, can be done outside the application entirely, not even requiring a plugin/ Only if the tracking requires information which cannot be determined externally. * Indeed, one can track several metrics: * time a window with the document is open * time a window with the document is visible * time a window with the document is fully visible * time a window with the document is in focus * time spend on acting on the document (by some measurement of the time surrounding an action) * Any sort of tracking is a privacy concern. Doubly so when tracking _by default_, with the information saved into the file without the user's explicit request.
It's not so much about personal opinions, whether someone finds functions helpful or not or if some task can be achieved with other tools. It's simply about the fact that this information was called "Total editing time" by its inventor, and that this term is misleading since it does not show what it is being called. As a developer / writer / editor, an ideal day would be, that one could work without distractions from the beginning to the end, which is very often not the case (phone calls here, other important tasks there). At the end of the day a view at "Total editing time" should show exactly that: how much time has been spent editing the document, neither "how much time has been spent reading the document or being absent from the computer" nor anything else but just "total editing time". I thought this could be accomplished very easily, obviously it's not the case. Never mind. I can solve the case by adding a few lines of JS in my webmail draft window, so the autosave can add the real editing time of text documents.
The topic was on the agenda of the design meeting. To summarize the previous comments it's probably the best to add this "time tracking" per extension. Moving the topic to the bug 145878 pile (and resolving it for the core development). A macro/extension is very much welcome.