libatk-adaptor breaks down the LibreOffice TexMaths extension

[Roland65]

Package: libatk-adaptor 2.18.1-2ubuntu1
System: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

If the package libatk-adaptor is installed on Ubuntu (as a depency of gnome-orca for example), it breaks down the LibreOffice TexMaths extension. TexMaths is a popular extension used to enter / edit LaTeX equations on LibreOffice (see http://roland65.free.fr/texmaths).

Step to reproduce the bug:

1. It is assumed that LibreOffice 5.1.4 (with at least the Writer and Draw components) is installed on Ubuntu. It is also assumed that libatk-adaptor is installed.

2. Install texlive:
sudo apt-get install texlive

3. Download and install the TexMaths extension (version 0.42) from there: https://sourceforge.net/projects/texmaths/files/0.42/

4. Create a new empty Writer document, then click on the Pi icon (this is the TexMaths icon) and in the window that opens, type: 'x(t)+y(t)' (without the quotes), then click on the LaTeX button. This generates an SVG image of the 'x(t)+y(t)' equation.

5. Select the SVG image of the equation by left clicking on it. Then click on the Pi icon. Now, instead of editing the equation, an error message is displayed: "The selected object is not a TexMaths equation... Please unselect it and call the macro again...".

6. Now, right click on the SVG image and select the 'Description' menu voice. In the window that opens, the description is empty and does not contain the equation text, as it should.

7. Now purge (and not just remove) the libatk-adaptor package:

sudo apt-get purge libatk-adaptor

then logout and login and repeat the steps 4, 5, and 6: everything is OK and the equation can be edited as usual.

Another way to remove the bug instead of purging libatk-adaptor is to rename the file: /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90atk-adaptor to /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90atk-adaptor.orig . Then logout and login.

Note there is another bug #1584795 that relates libatk-adaptor and LibreOffice, see there https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/at-spi2-atk/+bug/1584795

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Roland65 (roland65)]

Hi,

I forgot to mention that I am the author of the TexMaths extension. Of course, during my testing there was no other extension installed. The bug occurs in 5.1.x and 5.2.x versions of LibreOffice. I used a fresh Ubuntu 16.04.1 install for the test, but the bug appears in various Ubuntu flavours too, as many TexMaths users reported.

You should also consider the other bug I reported (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/at-spi2-atk/+bug/1584795), which relates LibreOffice and liabatk-adaptor.

These two bugs are 100% reproducibles.

[Roland (roland3)]

Bug confirmed on Debian 9 (stretch), too.
Here, libatk-adaptor is installed by default as a dependency of orca und task-xfce-desktop.
So i cannot purge it without breaking my system.

After disabling atk-adaptor

  mv /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90atk-adaptor /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90atk-adaptor.bak

as suggested by Roland65 here

  https://sourceforge.net/p/texmaths/bugs/69/#822d

my TexMaths-Plugin works fine.

[Paul Gevers (paul-climbing)]

I forwarded the bug to Debian.