OpenOffice writes a .recently-used entry with type "application/octet-stream" when not loading correctly

[Frank Rudzicz]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Clicking on Places->Recent Documents in the Gnome panel, and then on an *odp in the list in Dapper gives the message:

######
Could not open recently used document "file:///home/<PATHNAME>/<FILENAME>.odp"

Details: Could not find a suitable application.
######

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. That works for you. Does the path pointed still exists on your box? Does opening the same file from the Desktop works fine?

[Frank Rudzicz (frudzicz)]

Re: bug 47506.

I'm sorry for not being more detailed. The path does exist, and the file can
be opened by other means (File->open from within Impress, for example, and
double-clicking in Nautilus).

Other OpenOffice files (*ods) CAN be opened from Places->Recent Documents.
Those files have the appropriate OpenOffice icon appearing next to them in
the list - but OpenOffice Impress files have the de facto green Gnome foot
icon, as if *odp is not recognized. The filename is demo.odp (nothing weird
extension-wise).

Please let me know what else I can do to help.

>
>Thanks for your bug. That works for you. Does the path pointed still
>exists on your box? Does opening the same file from the Desktop works
>fine?
>
>** Changed in: gnome-panel (Ubuntu)
> Severity: Normal => Minor
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs
> Status: Unconfirmed => Needs Info
>
>--
>OpenOffice files not openable in Places->Recent Documents
>https://launchpad.net/bugs/47506

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you look to ~/.recently-used the entry concerning that file and copy it to a comment?

[Frank Rudzicz (frudzicz)]

The relevant item in ~/.recently-used is:

  <RecentItem>
    <URI>file:///home/<PATHNAME>/demo.odp</URI>
    <Mime-Type>application/octet-stream</Mime-Type>
    <Timestamp>1149018574</Timestamp>
    <Groups>
      <Group>openoffice.org</Group>
      <Group>staroffice</Group>
      <Group>starsuite</Group>
    </Groups>
  </RecentItem>

where <PATHNAME> is the correct path to demo.odp. New *odp presentations,
can be opened via Places->RecentDocuments, showing up in ~/.recently-used
with:

<Mime-Type>application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation</Mime-Type>

demo.odp was last changed in January (whilst in Suse), but read several
times since switching to a fresh install of Dapper in late April.

>
>could you look to ~/.recently-used the entry concerning that file and
>copy it to a comment?
>
>--
>OpenOffice files not openable in Places->Recent Documents
>https://launchpad.net/bugs/47506

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

"<Mime-Type>application/octet-stream</Mime-Type>", that is the issue. Is that specific to one file or happens with any .odp?

[Frank Rudzicz (frudzicz)]

Out of 377 items in .recently-used,
<Mime-Type>application/octet-stream</Mime-Type> appears 6 times - with *odp
twice, with *ods twice, and with *odg twice. On the other hand, 3
presentations, 17 graphics, 5 spreadsheets and 1 text opendocument files
have the correct mime type.

I think I might have found another clue. Some presentations have caused
OpenOffice to collapse on startup - they begin to load, and then ooffice
shuts down and gives me the document recovery error message. One file in
particular was causing a lot of troubles back in March on Suse. At the time,
I seemed to correct this problem by reinstalling the sun java jre (1.5) and
the reinstalling openoffice. The problematic file was not in my
.recently-used in Dapper, so I tried to open it conventially
(double-clicking in Nautilus). OpenOffice crashed again, and the resulting
entry in .recently used shows
<Mime-Type>application/octet-stream</Mime-Type>. I'm led to believe that all
OpenOffice files open at the time of such a crash will result in the faulty
mime-type entry in .recenty-used.

>
>"<Mime-Type>application/octet-stream</Mime-Type>", that is the issue. Is
>that specific to one file or happens with any .odp?
>
>--
>OpenOffice files not openable in Places->Recent Documents
>https://launchpad.net/bugs/47506

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you have an non-private example of file making openoffice crash? The .recently-used entry is written by openoffice itself anyway so reassigning the bug to it

[Rafał Próchniak (burlap)]

This is similar bug: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/43226

In my case it seems that octet-stream is assigned for documents I open in different openoffices. I have a dual boot dapper/breezy and this issue happens in both each time I open a document in dapper and change it, recently-used entry becomes incorrect in breezy and vice versa.

Is it changing the documents that causes this problem?

[Frank Rudzicz (frudzicz)]

Bug #43226 seems quite similar - maybe they should be merged? (sorry)

When I was in Suse 10.0 the problematic *odp stopped crashing openoffice
once I installed OpenOffice 2.0 as provided from their website. I thought it
was an issue with Java dependencies, since I had updated JDK after
installing the original OpenOffice 1.999 (I contacted OpenOffice directly at
that time).

Once I went to 2.0 I never went back, so I didn't observe the effect of
changing openoffices. Oddly, a presentation once crashed just when I was
just scrolling up and down on the left slides pane quickly with the
middle-scroll wheel on the mouse. The recovered *odp and the *odp I had
saved before the crash could then not be opened.

[Frank Rudzicz (frudzicz)]

The attached *odp crashes OpenOffice 2.0 in Dapper immediately after load. It is from a tutorial I gave for a course on AI a few months ago.

This *odp was created when I was still in Suse 10.0. An identical *ppt version of this file created at the same time now opens just fine in Dapper, and can be edited. I wonder if the problem is then related to the reading of the *odp file format itself, or perhaps in the rendering of slide thumbnail previews...

The file uses various images I found on the web (mostly from academic sites), and its previous incarnations crashed Suse's OpenOffice regularly before I finally got it to work by updating Java, then OpenOffice (from openoffice.org directly). I have no reason to assume the images *themselves* are somehow at fault for crashing Impress, but I never had such problems in many other *odp presentations.

Should I report a separate bug in openoffice regarding the crashing phenomenon itself?