Hangs while modifying document (after completion of paste from Wep Page with Multiple Images)

[Lonnie Lee Best]

Follow these steps to bring LibreOffice writer to a crawl:

1) Allow this page to fully load in firefox (in a new tab):
http://www.amorosity.com/SlingBlade/

2) Click on the page and hit ctrl-a, then ctrl-c (coping the entire page's contents into memory).

3) Open LibreOffice writer, and paste your clipboard into it.

I don't mind waiting for all the images to get loaded. The main point here, is that performance is not only slow during the initial paste. After the images get fully loaded into the word processing document, interacting with the document becomes impractical. Everything you try to do makes the application hang for several seconds.

I have 4 gigabytes of RAM available for LibreOffice writer to use as it wishes, but it must be using some type of swap file (instead) while I'm modifying this large document. However, I have a really fast solid-state hard drive, so you'd think that even that would be fast on my machine.

My machine should have the specs to enable me the ability to handle converting this large web page into a word processing document.

Yes there are other ways to achieve what I'm trying to do, but this bug is about how LibreOffice can't handle the job. If it was programmed just right, it would make use of the resources my computer would gladly provide it, and scale up to this rather intensive task.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: libreoffice-writer 1:4.0.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-19.29-generic 3.8.8
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu May 2 23:09:24 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-02 (31 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130401)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

I tried this same experiment using Microsoft Word 2007. It took about 20 seconds to paste the web page into Word. After that, interacting with the document was just as fast as interacting with a blank document. It is this interaction lag that I'm primary pointing out in this bug report.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

This attachment was saved using MS Word 2007.

OpenLibre writer has no problem opening this document and interacting with it.

So, apparently, this bug has more to do with "how OpenLibre writer deals with pasting from a web page".

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Not reproducible in Xubuntu.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 13.04
Release: 13.04

apt-cache policy libreoffice-writer
libreoffice-writer:
  Installed: 1:4.0.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:4.0.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1:4.0.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

This remains an issue in the latest Libre Office Writer (6.2.5.2( on Ubuntu 19.04. The bug is so bad that it locks up the entire GNOME desktop for at least a whole minute.

This Libre Office Writer bug as taught me something about the GNOME desktop; it is very disappointing that GNOME is designed in a manner that allows an application-level bug, to effect my ability to use all other applications. That's bad segmentation between applications.

The steps to reproduces are outlined at the top of this bug report. Be sure to allow the page to complete loading in step 1. Your machine will lock up too.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Lonnie Lee Best, to clarify, you are using the default packages for LO (i.e. not snaps, upstream versions, etc.)?

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Hi Lonnie, thanks for verifying this. I've also managed to reproduce this on Debian Stretch with TDF's own 6.3.0 deb. As this is evidently not an Ubuntu-specific issue, could I please ask that you file an upstream bug report for this at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=LibreOffice&format=guided and share the link to that bug here?

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Description:
Libre Office Writer locks up itself and the entire GNOME desktop when you paste into it the contents of a web page that contains numerous large pictures and text.

Steps to Reproduce:
I have 64GB of RAM in my laptop. I expect everyone can reproduce this by strictly following these steps:

1) Allow this page to fully load in firefox (in a new tab):
http://www.amorosity.com/SlingBlade/
(wait until the page is finished loading)

2) Click into the page (to give it focus) and then hit ctrl-a (to select all contents in the page), then hit ctrl-c (coping the entire page's contents into memory).

3) Open LibreOffice writer, and paste your clipboard into a blank page.

Actual Results:
From this point forward, LibreOffice Writer will be unusable, and the whole GNOME desktop will lock up (for almost a whole minute) each time you try to navigate the LibreOffice Writer page.

Expected Results:
I expect the application to either efficiently handle the task or decline to handle the task.

Reproducible: Always

User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
So, this is a bug in LibreOffice Writer for sure; if it can't handle the work, it should decline it.

Additionally, this is bug in the GNOME desktop, because no single application's workload should ever be allowed to lock up a multi-task desktop environment.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126906

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

This bug has been confirmed in this downstream report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/df-libreoffice/+bug/1175882

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Thank you for taking the time to do that Lonnie. Much appreciated.

[Richard Elkins (texadactyl)]

I've had a similar issue with multiple versions of libreoffice-writer for at least 2 years. Currently, I am on Xubuntu 18.04.3.up-to-date; libreoffice-writer 1:6.0.7-0ubuntu0.18.04.9.

My process:
* I use xfce4-screenshooter (1.8.2-2, currently) to copy a portion of a chrome screen from a Coursera.org lecture to the Xfce clipboard.
* Then, I attempt to paste it into my ODT document.

These screenshot images are PNG when I save them first to the file system and then insert them into the document - cumbersome but always reliable.

If the clipboard contains a small/medium image, the paste works fine.

Beyond a certain size threshold (not large), the paste puts libreoffice-writer into a very long (closed?) loop.

This does not happen on my spouse's Mac! (-: Sorry but I have no access at the moment to other distros/desktops for additional testing. Yes, I already tried a "latest" copy of libreoffice from their site with the same results. So, I am of the opinion that this is some sort of interface issue with Xfce, Gnome, or Gnu libraries.

If someone would like me to be a guinea pig, please let me know.

[Richard Elkins (texadactyl)]

This report might be related to this one which I had forgotten about:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-settings/+bug/1655398

[Arivleone (arivleone)]

Thanks for reporting the problem.
I can't reproduce in
Version: 6.3.4.2
Build ID: 60da17e045e08f1793c57c00ba83cdfce946d0aa
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.0; UI render: default; VCL: kde5;
Locale: id-ID (id_ID.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded

and

Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: 4ff12ba6f4639c73587f2bb58afcc3ca6fb30105
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.0; UI render: default; VCL: kf5;
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@86-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2020-01-24_21:09:14
Locale: id-ID (id_ID.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded

I am using KDE, when I try to reproduce, the Writer went to laggy, but it didn't locks up the entire desktop. I think it's normal, because we using amount of memory to copy the huge of content. Should I change it to RESOLVED NOTABUG? I change to NEEDINFO for a while

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

I can still reproduce this on Kubuntu 19.10. Here's a video of me reproducing it:
https://youtu.be/EM26C_Q-hKA

I was using GNOME when I first reported this bug. KDE is handling this better than GNOME did, but Libre Office Writer still becomes unusable after following the exact steps I outlined above.

[Qa-admin-q (qa-admin-q)]

[Automated Action] NeedInfo-To-Unconfirmed

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

BTW, when I first reported this bug, in 2013, the web page (referenced in step 1) contained only png images.

Today, it contains webp images exclusively:
http://www.amorosity.com/SlingBlade/

All modern web browsers support webp images:
https://developers.google.com/speed/webp

However, Libre Office doesn't support webp.

Despite this lack of webp support, it is not the cause of the bug being reported here. The bug would still happen even if those images were still PNGs.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

A separate bug, related to webp support, has been submitted here:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=130759

[Ilmari-lauhakangas (ilmari-lauhakangas)]

No lockup here, 32GB RAM. KDE Plasma.

Arch Linux 64-bit
Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha1+
Build ID: c73418d8d1258ea0a8c77c07672fd182e2b28b26
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.6; UI render: default; VCL: kf5;
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Built on 9 May 2020

[Xiscofauli (xiscofauli)]

Thank you for reporting the bug.
Could you please try to reproduce it with the latest version of LibreOffice from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/ ?
I have set the bug's status to 'NEEDINFO'. Please change it back to 'UNCONFIRMED' if the bug is still present in the latest version.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

A lot has changed since I originally submitted this bug report.

That page no longer contains PNG images, and it seems that LibreOffice Writer doesn't support the new webp standard images that the page contains. Read about webp here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP

Additionally, I'm now using Kubuntu 20.04, which is less likely to lock up when a single applications has a problem.

I created a png version of the page again, so that I could test this in Kubuntu 20.04. I don't want to post a hyperlink of that page here, because I don't want google to index it. To get to the png version of the page, add "png/" onto the end of this URL:
http://www.amorosity.com/SlingBlade/

From there, you can test this yourself by following steps 2 and 3 given at the top of this report.

In Kubuntu 20.04, LibreOffice Writer does a poor job at scaling the png images (that the page contains), but it doesn't crash in Kubuntu 20.04.

I can no longer speak for GNOME 3, but you can easily test it yourself from the png version of the page that I made exclusively for this bug report.

[Ilmari-lauhakangas (ilmari-lauhakangas)]

(In reply to launchpad from comment #9)
> I created a png version of the page again, so that I could test this in
> Kubuntu 20.04. I don't want to post a hyperlink of that page here, because I
> don't want google to index it. To get to the png version of the page, add
> "png/" onto the end of this URL:
> http://www.amorosity.com/SlingBlade/

It does not lock up for me with KDE Plasma either. Finishes OK. I think we should close.

[Richard Elkins (texadactyl)]

Current libreoffice-writer version: 1:7.0.2~rc2-0ubuntu1 amd64

The issue is no longer present.