Bug 45349 - Formula disappears after editing
Summary: Formula disappears after editing
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 99225
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Formula Editor (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.4.4 release
Hardware: x86 (IA32) All
: medium major
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 50420 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-01-28 15:28 UTC by Alexander Lisovoy
Modified: 2016-12-20 14:16 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
screenshot of this bug (12.75 KB, image/png)
2012-01-28 15:28 UTC, Alexander Lisovoy
Details
Another screenshot of the problem. (83.03 KB, image/png)
2012-01-31 08:06 UTC, arrowdodger
Details
Example file where a formula has disappeared (540.82 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text-flat-xml)
2012-08-16 13:15 UTC, vitkecar
Details
Very short document exhibiting the bug (11.25 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2012-10-25 18:22 UTC, AgeveRifier
Details
Another buggy document, started with scratch, no images (10.75 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2012-10-31 18:11 UTC, AgeveRifier
Details
Disappearing formulas (18.68 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2014-02-04 23:27 UTC, christophercchambers
Details

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Description Alexander Lisovoy 2012-01-28 15:28:59 UTC
Created attachment 56272 [details]
screenshot of this bug

Some formulas disappeared after editind them in Writer. At first, formula box becomes small and contains constrained image of formula (see attachment). When I trying to edit "constrained" formula, I get box without a formula.

Sorry for my bad English.
Comment 1 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2012-01-29 10:06:18 UTC
What is the format of your text document? doc or odt ?

Please attach a document which shows the problem.
Note: no problem for me with formulas (LO 3.4.x and LO 3.5.0 rc2+) under Ubuntu 11.10.

Best regards. JBF
Comment 2 arrowdodger 2012-01-31 08:06:37 UTC
Created attachment 56398 [details]
Another screenshot of the problem.

I have this problem too on LO 3.4.4 and 3.4.5 on FreeBSD but with slightly different symptoms though.
I create a new file, edit it by adding formulas and they are showed OK. After that, i save document as Word 2003 .doc, close it, open again and see screwed formulas.
When i double-click on them, they gets fixed until next opening.
Comment 3 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2012-01-31 12:34:18 UTC
duplicate of bug 42975.

Best regards. JBF

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 42975 ***
Comment 4 Alexander Lisovoy 2012-01-31 13:10:39 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> duplicate of bug 42975.
> 
> Best regards. JBF
> 
> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 42975 ***

This bug isn't a duplicate of bug because it appears in odt files and formula don't get the correct form after clicking. It just dissaperars (turns into blank formula object). I can attach document where was this problem, but I already fixed all the formulas.
Comment 5 Toussis Manolis 2012-02-01 02:16:03 UTC
I agree with bug 45349 reporter, that this bug is not related to my report of bug 42975.
I use formula editor a lot, and I happen to see both bugs appear.
I reported 45349, because it is now consistent in my system, but this bug (42975) happens from time to time and looses formulae in my files.
Comment 6 Toussis Manolis 2012-02-01 02:17:50 UTC
Messed up the bug numbers in the last comment, the correct is:


I agree with bug 45349 reporter, that this bug is not related to my report of
bug 42975.
I use formula editor a lot, and I happen to see both bugs appear.
I reported bug 42975, because it is now consistent in my system, but this bug
(bug 45349) happens from time to time and looses formulae in my files.
Comment 7 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2012-02-04 13:08:36 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)
> Messed up the bug numbers in the last comment, the correct is:
> 
> 
> I agree with bug 45349 reporter, that this bug is not related to my report of
> bug 42975.
> I use formula editor a lot, and I happen to see both bugs appear.
> I reported bug 42975, because it is now consistent in my system, but this bug
> (bug 45349) happens from time to time and looses formulae in my files.

So, please attach a file in which formulas has been lost.

Best regards. JBF
Comment 8 collette 2012-02-20 01:48:08 UTC
I meet the problem with libreoffice 3.5.0 on windows XP 64 bit.
I saved my document and when I reloaded it, some formulas have disappeared.
Comment 9 sasha.libreoffice 2012-03-15 08:21:20 UTC
Thanks for bugreport. Currently it is important to answer to one question:
Formula disappears during editing or after save/open file?
Comment 10 AgeveRifier 2012-05-28 03:27:39 UTC
I'm having the same issues, but regrettably found this report /after/ writing my own one: https://pokersource.info/show_bug.cgi?id=50420
How do you mark that one as duplicate without resolving it?

(In reply to comment #9)
> Thanks for bugreport. Currently it is important to answer to one question:
> Formula disappears during editing or after save/open file?

During edit: Definitely (fact).
Edited a formula, worked my way a page downward (inserted a few dozen formulae), and noticed that old formula got garbled. In the latest case, which made me register and report, three formula became empty simultaneously.

After save/open file:
Depends on how you mean it.

Definition: A formula is "ageve.buggy", if it displayes the correct formula in a wrong aspect ratio (and therefore looks garbled). These ageve-buggy formulae show the behaviour that, when attempted to be edited (sometimes, very rarely, even on their own) are replaced by a different formula (which is then displayed in the correct aspect ratio). From that point onwards, they are no longer called "ageve-buggy". It seems that the size of the new formula matches the "stretched / shrinked" size of the formula at the point it was ageve-buggy.

With that definition, it's easier to answer:
ageve-buggy formulae stay ageve-buggy when saved/opened. They are not refreshed by saving/opening.
The only unexpected bahaviour is that sometimes formulae become "ageve-buggy".
Everything else (ageve-buggy stays ageve-buggy, changed formula stay changed) works, well, "as expected".

I hope I could help.
Comment 11 sasha.libreoffice 2012-05-28 03:31:14 UTC
Thanks for additional information and explanations
Comment 12 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2012-05-28 03:45:21 UTC
*** Bug 50420 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 AgeveRifier 2012-05-28 04:09:31 UTC
> Definition: A formula is "ageve.buggy", if [...]

New behaviour, most definitely related:
Created formula A, create formula B, copied A, pasted A somewhere else as C, edited B -- Bam, B vanished.

I wrote "new behaviour" since this doesn't conform with my previous "definition":
B displayed the correct (old) formula before double-clicking.

Note that this bug (both forms) has occured about seven times for me in the last hours: I wrote around around one page in total.
Very annoying bug.
Comment 14 bfoman (inactive) 2012-07-13 09:56:52 UTC
Could you attach any example documents to allow others to check on different
system/build?
Comment 15 vitkecar 2012-08-16 13:15:15 UTC
Created attachment 65650 [details]
Example file where a formula has disappeared

Here is an example. Formula (27) in this document has disappeared.
Comment 16 sasha.libreoffice 2012-08-17 09:30:37 UTC
Thanks for attachment.
IMHO formulas hold in document as two objects simultaneously: formula itself and picture that represent formula. When we enter formula editor by double click, we working with formula. When we exit formula editor and editing text, then we see picture that represents formula, not formula itself.
Therefore it is hard to determine exact moment when formula disappears. When formula itself disappeared from document, we can see picture that represents formula for some time. And after some time when picture updates, formula disappears on picture too.
Comment 17 AgeveRifier 2012-10-25 18:22:13 UTC
Created attachment 69086 [details]
Very short document exhibiting the bug

Not sure whether I used the "obsoletes" checkbox correctly.
This file only contains a short formula. When you open the file, you can see the formula. When you try to edit it, it vanishes.
Comment 18 AgeveRifier 2012-10-25 18:50:57 UTC
I finally reduced it to a pretty short document which exhibits this behavior.

It seems to *have been* either triggered by:
- adding an image previously (out-of-sync image IDs?)
OR by:
- coping a large block of text / formulae (plural, multiple of them) mixture

This behavior still exists with these build:
LibreOffice 3.4.5 
OOO340m1 (Build:502)
LibreOffice 3.4.6 
OOO340m1 (Build:602)

The latter is the newest version in the Fedora repositories, according to yum
Comment 19 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2012-10-26 04:49:32 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> Created attachment 69086 [details]
> Very short document exhibiting the bug
> 
> Not sure whether I used the "obsoletes" checkbox correctly.
> This file only contains a short formula. When you open the file, you can see
> the formula. When you try to edit it, it vanishes.

Indeed, in your bugdoc, the text of the formula is empty. You can see it  by renaming your file with zip extension and opening it with your archive manager. Look at Object20 object and its content.xml file. 

How did you make this file? 
I do not reproduce the problem (save an empty formula) when I create a new file and write a formula from scratch. Tested with LO 3.6.4.0+ under Ubuntu 12.04 x86_64.

Best regards. JBF
Comment 20 AgeveRifier 2012-10-28 08:33:52 UTC
I can only repeat myself -- but this time with a few more words. This is what I did:

- Create new document
- write text
- with forumlas. Many.
- "Re-Use" (see below) same document for multiple purposes
- Works as desired (note that there are no images yet, this might be relevant)
- Close

One "re-use" step is:
- open again
- save as somewhere else
- Delete nearly the whole document (I'm too lazy to use "Vorlagen", can't find the English word)
- Write a new document, with dozens of formulas
- save
- Works as desired (note that there are no images yet, this might be relevant)

On the last iteration, I did two things that I normally don't do.
This may or may not have triggered the bug:
- write formulas, add image, resize image, write formulas
- copying a large block of text/formulas mixture

Oh and, I have an extremely old setup over here:
CPU uses 32 bit, and has no SSE support (yes, I am ashamed)
Also very low on RAM (but that shouldn't cause this, right?)

So far I have not been able to "intentionally" reproduce the bug. It always appears when I'm working on something, and very rarely.
But if it happens, I have to rewrite the ten pages, more or less from scratch :(

I'll experiment a bit -- if I finally find a way to reproduce it, I'll write again.
Comment 21 AgeveRifier 2012-10-31 18:11:19 UTC
Created attachment 69364 [details]
Another buggy document, started with scratch, no images

Aaand another one.

This time, I wrote the document from scratch.
No images used in the document, and this specific formula was not involved in copy/pasting, but I copy/pasted other formulas (two simultaneously).

I have no idea why this time, not even the old image appears.

I'm sorry I can't give out the whole document when the bug occurs, since these are assignments and I don't want my true name to appear here.

I'm starting to backup all formulas in an external editor just so I don't have to type anything. Sigh.
Comment 22 AgeveRifier 2012-10-31 18:15:20 UTC
Just an idea I had:

Might it be some kind of race condition when creating formulas one-by-one? I'm using shortcuts, and most "formulas" are pretty short.
As I already said, I have VERY old hardware here, and the display hangs sometimes for a seconds (Memory usage: 1.5 virtual of 1.0 GiB physical ). Sometimes I even type a line ahead of the display.
This is the only condition I can't reproduce when testing, and this would explain why nobody (barely anybody) else is experiencing this.
Comment 23 Toussis Manolis 2012-10-31 18:32:47 UTC
(In reply to comment #22)
> Just an idea I had:
> 
> Might it be some kind of race condition when creating formulas one-by-one?
> I'm using shortcuts, and most "formulas" are pretty short.
> As I already said, I have VERY old hardware here, and the display hangs
> sometimes for a seconds (Memory usage: 1.5 virtual of 1.0 GiB physical ).
> Sometimes I even type a line ahead of the display.
> This is the only condition I can't reproduce when testing, and this would
> explain why nobody (barely anybody) else is experiencing this.

I don't agree about your explanation. I have the "formula disappears" bug, on my new laptop (E350 amd 4GB, though not so quick machine) , and on my desktop (4GB ram, quad core amd , very quick one).

Some point I'd like to add. The description "Formula disappears after editing" is not so close to my problem. The formula disappearring can happen in an old formula of the document, and not specificly on the edited one.
Comment 24 AgeveRifier 2012-12-07 12:35:24 UTC
Switched to TeX, no further bugreports from me.
Comment 25 Rubén Moreno Montoliu 2012-12-10 21:07:26 UTC
This has happened to me today. I experienced this bug for the very first time writing a nearly one hundred pages document with hundreds of formulas back in November or December 2008 using latest OpenOffice.org on both Windows XP and Fedora 64 bits. It was very annoying to have to write formulas again and again.

Today, with a nearly 20 pages document using LibreOffice 3.6.3.2 (ID: 58f22d5) on Windows 7 64 bits it appeared again. It think it was my third session with the document.

I was editing two formulas in a paragraph. When the second formula was finished the first formula, and another one from a previous paragraph showed stretched as seen on a screenshot earlier in this thread. When double-clicking on the stretched formulas the text in them disappeared.

My current system is an intel i7-2600 quad-core with hyperthreading and 16GB RAM with Windows 7 64bits. Back in 2008 I was using an AMD k7 x2 3600+ with 2GB RAM with Windows XP and Fedora 64 bits.

I'm afraid I can't voluntarily reproduce the bug. If I'm able to save the doc with a buggy formula I'll upload it as an attachment.

PS: The document was created from scratch in LibreOffice, and always edited from LibreOffice, using default ODT format.
Comment 26 Jorendc 2013-01-27 21:02:21 UTC
I can't reproduce the problem, but reading this bug report I do see a lot of people who can. Therefore I mark this bug report as NEW.
Comment 27 Jean-Philippe Brabant 2013-02-19 18:31:27 UTC
This bug still happen in Libre Office 4.0. I don't think the priority of this bug is high enough. This is like when writing new word in a paragraphs, some old word randomly disappear.

When editing a new formula, an old one will suddenly get a lot smaller (a little cube) and when double clicking on this old formula, it will be empty. 

Their is no steps to reproduce this bug. It just happen randomly.
Comment 28 collette 2013-04-15 11:01:03 UTC
I also meet the problem on LibreOffice 4.0.2 + Windows XP 64.
I've got a powerful machine (12 cores) and a lot of RAM (12 Go).
Some formulas periodically disappears. Each time this happens, I must rewrite them (I exported the document to pdf before, which eases the rewritting of the formulas).

This bugs is very annoying and leave libreoffice almost unusable for scientific writting.

YC
Comment 29 collette 2013-08-13 06:28:01 UTC
When I see the importance of this bug and that release after release of libreoffice, nothing happens around the formula editor ....
Are you still interested in the formula editor ?
Comment 30 bfoman (inactive) 2013-08-13 16:55:45 UTC
As you can read at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.2 some new features are added.
I think this bug needs always reproducible testcase against the latest stable release. "It just happen randomly" or "Some formulas periodically disappears" - doesn't really help to reproduce the problem. If you are power users and can attach a step by step testcase then there is a chance that someone will fix it.
Comment 31 kylebloss 2013-09-08 21:29:42 UTC
To me this happens even without saving!  It just vanishes into thin air WHILE I'M EDITING IT.  Ctrl Z doesn't help.
Comment 32 fcultrera93@gmail.com 2013-12-07 12:58:48 UTC
Same problem with LibreOffice 4.1.3.2 on Windows 8.1 64-bit(Sony Vaio S).
When editing or saving a Writer's document (.docx/.doc/.odt) some formulas disappear.
I noticed that the problem occurs when in the document there will be a lot of formulas and/or when I insert formulas in a bulleted list
Comment 33 christophercchambers 2014-02-04 23:14:44 UTC
Just had an fodt document do the same thing. Changed it to odt, and no change.

Whenever I try to edit an existing formula, it turns blank. When I first opened the file, half the formulas were gone, so I had to reload partially from backup.

Using version 4.1.3.2.
Comment 34 christophercchambers 2014-02-04 23:27:32 UTC
Created attachment 93421 [details]
Disappearing formulas

I pasted this from a problem document. Whenever I edit one of the formulas, it disappears.

I created the formulas in 4.1.3.2, and I saved this test file in 4.2.0.4.
Comment 35 sasha.libreoffice 2014-02-05 10:57:13 UTC
Thanks for adding test document. Bug now easily reproducible and resembles this:
Bug 48000 - Impress EDITING: formula behaves incorrect after editing

Sorry, but "version" is where bug first time found. Not a current version of LO. If bug disappears we just closing bug.
Changing back to 3.4.4
Comment 36 Toussis Manolis 2014-02-05 16:44:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #35)
> ...Bug now easily reproducible ...

The attached document is already infected by the bug, and if you see the contents of the its file structure, Object1 and Object2 are already empty.

To be reproducible, someone has to describe a finite number of simple steps, to reproduce the erroneous document. Saving and attaching the erroneous document after the appearance of the bug does not help for pinpointing it. This is the hard part of the bug.
Comment 37 christophercchambers 2014-02-09 21:29:40 UTC
I was able to reproduce the bug by creating a bunch of random formulas and text, cutting and pasting it a bunch of times (so I had over 25 formulas in the document, maybe 50), and saving it several times. I closed Libreoffice 4.2 and re-opened it each time. I re-opened it in 4.1 and the last few formulas were blank. I closed without saving and then opened in 4.2, same thing. It appears to have something to do with having a large number of formulas in a document. I'll try to pin it down.
Comment 38 arrowdodger 2014-05-01 14:48:47 UTC
Got bitten by this bug again in LO 4.1.5.3 on FreeBSD.

I've been editing a formula and after hitting ESC i've got empty square. After that many other formulas became shrinked in their size, and double clicking them make them empty. Damn, now i have to recheck the whole file.

Initially i thought that this bug is triggering by copy-pasting formula objects, so for this document i haven't used it. All formulas were created from scratch, but it didn't help.

I can attach a document with shrinked formula, which disappears on editing attempt, if needed.
Comment 39 Jean-Baptiste Faure 2014-05-01 15:42:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #37)
> I was able to reproduce the bug by creating a bunch of random formulas and
> text, cutting and pasting it a bunch of times [...]

How do you proceed to cut and paste? Do you proceed on the object or on the formula code (double click on the formula to edit, copy the code)?

Best regards. JBF
Comment 40 TJ 2014-12-29 22:14:19 UTC
I've just hit this issue with

libreoffice-math:
  Installed: 1:4.2.7-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1:4.2.7-0ubuntu2

Started with a new writer ODT document. Writing answers to exercises in a Math text I'm reading.

Entering geometric algebra formulae into the text as Objects.

After adding approximately 30 formulae I noticed a glitch where the contents of an existing formula were empty when I went to edit it.

I later realised this seemed to coincide with the formula's image content appearing scaled to uncomfortable dimensions, i.e. the text of the image would appear massively stretched horizontally. I spent a lot of time trying to 'resize' the Object frame thinking it was just a scaling issue - not knowing then that the formula and image aren't one and the same.

The document now has around 80 formulae Objects and the issue is happening frequently.

At the point in time where it is obvious the formula has been deleted there doesn't seem to be a way to recover. Usually the saved version of the document has already lost the content even when the Object image looks perfectly correct.

With LO not providing any useful production logging it is rather difficult to develop a reliably reproducable test case, but this is a major problem if embedded objects lose their content randomly with no warning or ability to trace.
Comment 41 QA Administrators 2016-01-17 20:04:31 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 42 Buovjaga 2016-12-20 14:16:09 UTC
I checked and this has the same issue as bug 99225

Markup in the Object 20 content.xml is only
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow/></math>

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 99225 ***