[Upstream] LibreOffice Calc Format Cell Dialog is sometimes unusable

[Paul White]

Problem description:
In Calc, right-clicking on any cell and then selecting Format Cells often produces a dialog box that is unusable as it is almost transparent. Closing and re-opening the dialog has no effect. Calc has to be restarted to clear the problem.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Right click on any Calc cell
2. Select Format Cell

Current behavior:
Dialog is partly transparent or perhaps it would be better to say its contents are mostly missing.

Expected behavior:
Dialog allows formatting of cell with all contents visible.

Please note: This doesn't happen all of the time but has happened often enough for me to report this as a bug.

I'm using Kubuntu 14.04, fully updated with LibreOffice loaded from PPA. The previous version, in the Ubuntu archive (4.1.3?) also exhibits this problem. KDE version is 4.12.1.
---
ApportVersion: 2.13.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-01-01 (24 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Alpha amd64 (20140101)
Package: libreoffice 1:4.2.0~rc2-0ubuntu1~trusty2 [origin: LP-PPA-libreoffice-libreoffice-prereleases]
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-5.20-generic 3.13.0
Tags: trusty third-party-packages
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-5-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: This is not an official Ubuntu package. Please remove any third party package and try again.
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Created attachment 91274
"Format Cells" dialog displayed with no content - transparent.

The "Format Cells" dialog is displayed with no content - just a border and title bar. See attachment. To see the content this sometimes works - Click inside the border until the content reveals itself.

Steps to replicate the problem -

1.
Compile libreoffice with the --enable-kde4 flag

2.
Start calc

3.
Fill cells A:1 through BZ:60 with data - I chose 0 thru 9 as my data. See attachment.

4.
Select cells BN:7 thru BZ:47

5.
Right click in selection and chose the "Format Cells" option

6.
"Format Cells" dialog displays as just a border and title bar - no content. See attachment.

7.
Click anywhere within border of the dialog and sometimes the content appears. This sometimes is when a listbox/dropbox is activated by the click. If content doesn't appear click the dialogs close button to gain control of spreadsheet.

Alex

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Created attachment 91274
"Format Cells" dialog displayed with no content - transparent.

The "Format Cells" dialog is displayed with no content - just a border and title bar. See attachment. To see the content this sometimes works - Click inside the border until the content reveals itself.

Steps to replicate the problem -

1.
Compile libreoffice with the --enable-kde4 flag

2.
Start calc

3.
Fill cells A:1 through BZ:60 with data - I chose 0 thru 9 as my data. See attachment.

4.
Select cells BN:7 thru BZ:47

5.
Right click in selection and chose the "Format Cells" option

6.
"Format Cells" dialog displays as just a border and title bar - no content. See attachment.

7.
Click anywhere within border of the dialog and sometimes the content appears. This sometimes is when a listbox/dropbox is activated by the click. If content doesn't appear click the dialogs close button to gain control of spreadsheet.

Alex

[Marco Menardi (mmenaz)]

Reproducible with 4.1.4~rc2 and KDE 4.12 kubuntu 12.04-32

[Marco Menardi (mmenaz)]

Reproducible with 4.1.4~rc2 and KDE 4.12 kubuntu 12.04-32

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Problem description:
In Calc, right-clicking on any cell and then selecting Format Cells often produces a dialog box that is unusable as it is almost transparent. Closing and re-opening the dialog has no effect. Calc has to be restarted to clear the problem.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Right click on any Calc cell
2. Select Format Cell

Current behavior:
Dialog is partly transparent so its contents cannot be seen.

Expected behavior:
Dialog allows formatting of cell with all contents visible.

Please note: This doesn't happen all of the time but has happened often enough for me to report this as a bug.

I'm using Kubuntu 14.04, fully updated with LibreOffice loaded from PPA. The previous version, in the Ubuntu archive (4.1.3?) also exhibits this problem. KDE version is 4.12.1.

Is this similar to bug #33985, long resolved for version 3?

Operating System: Ubuntu
Version: 4.2.0.3 rc

[Barta-c (barta-c)]

I see no partly transparent dialog in 4.1.4.2 under Win7 64bit.

would you please post a screnshot?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

I wasn't expecting most people to see this problem as I din't find a current bug report. If others were seeing it I'm sure the bug/problem would have been reported by now. As I said before, it doesn't happen very often.

As I'm not experiencing this problem right now I cannot post a screenshot. When I see this problem again I'll try to attach a screenshot to the bug report.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Paul White, thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:
apport-collect 1272725
When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

apport information

[Mariosv (mariosv)]

Hi Paul,

please try resetting the user profile, sometimes solves strange issues.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Created attachment 92804
Format Cells dialog screenshot

Screenshot added as requested. Multiple sheets in workbook, only some are affected. Will now re-set profile and advise if problem seen again.

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 74054 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 74054 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Bug #74054 is a duplicate of #73115

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

This looks like a KDE4 backend problem. Doesn't happen with we GNOME backend.
For me not only this Window is transparent, but the whole application stops processing (internal?) X11 (paint?) events (just move the window).

If I close the dialog by guessing the button or pressing ESC, everything continues to work fine...

Actually for me it just happens, if LO has some content in the clipboard (probably again a QClipboard problem).

And it just happens with this modal dialog. I've tested other dialogs, which using the same class (SfxTabDialog), but these don't freeze.

Currently I'm investigating, what makes this particular dialog so special. All threads are actually Yielding, nobody seems to wit for a lock - very strange.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

This looks like a KDE4 backend problem. Doesn't happen with we GNOME backend.
For me not only this Window is transparent, but the whole application stops processing (internal?) X11 (paint?) events (just move the window).

If I close the dialog by guessing the button or pressing ESC, everything continues to work fine...

Actually for me it just happens, if LO has some content in the clipboard (probably again a QClipboard problem).

And it just happens with this modal dialog. I've tested other dialogs, which using the same class (SfxTabDialog), but these don't freeze.

Currently I'm investigating, what makes this particular dialog so special. All threads are actually Yielding, nobody seems to wit for a lock - very strange.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Can you please verify that the shortcut (Ctrl+1) and "Format -> Cells" always work correct? I just can test master, which has additional fixes.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Can you please verify that the shortcut (Ctrl+1) and "Format -> Cells" always work correct? I just can test master, which has additional fixes.

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

(ctrl+1) and Format -> Cells seem to work ok.

Right click in selection and chose the "Format Cells" option - not ok.

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

(ctrl+1) and Format -> Cells seem to work ok.

Right click in selection and chose the "Format Cells" option - not ok.

[Libreoffice-commits (libreoffice-commits)]

Jan-Marek Glogowski committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=aeda478a02523cec146f6af69710f0391061db56

fdo#73115: Always run timeouts as events

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

[Libreoffice-commits (libreoffice-commits)]

Jan-Marek Glogowski committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=aeda478a02523cec146f6af69710f0391061db56

fdo#73115: Always run timeouts as events

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

[Libreoffice-commits (libreoffice-commits)]

Jan-Marek Glogowski committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-4-2":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=7dba6e0a71d090f06a6a1a39e87572674593b48a&h=libreoffice-4-2

fdo#73115: Always run timeouts as events

It will be available in LibreOffice 4.2.3.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

[Libreoffice-commits (libreoffice-commits)]

Jan-Marek Glogowski committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-4-2":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=7dba6e0a71d090f06a6a1a39e87572674593b48a&h=libreoffice-4-2

fdo#73115: Always run timeouts as events

It will be available in LibreOffice 4.2.3.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Jan-Marek

Thanks for the great work.

As this bug occurs in the KDE integration I can't use the daily builds to test so I will need to compile then test.

It's been a couple of months since my last successful compile so I suspect it will take me some time to get up to date of the latest set of code and successfully compile.

Will keep you posted.

Alex

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Jan-Marek

Thanks for the great work.

As this bug occurs in the KDE integration I can't use the daily builds to test so I will need to compile then test.

It's been a couple of months since my last successful compile so I suspect it will take me some time to get up to date of the latest set of code and successfully compile.

Will keep you posted.

Alex

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

Hi Jan-Marek,

Unfortunately with this commit applied, I now observe this bug with top level windows, i.e. the main window is transparent, making the app unusable. Would be great if you could look at this. Thanks in advance.

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

Hi Jan-Marek,

Unfortunately with this commit applied, I now observe this bug with top level windows, i.e. the main window is transparent, making the app unusable. Would be great if you could look at this. Thanks in advance.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Which build / version are you testing?

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Which build / version are you testing?

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Which build / version are you testing?
master from commit 2acdcb2374e448371b173feb03650d8d6db8aba2 pulled some hours ago. It's my own build with --enable-kde4. When I revert your commit, this problem disappears.

BTW we have similar reports for Windows, there is one from 2011 (!) - Bug 33985, but I saw a new one some month ago (can't find it now).

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Which build / version are you testing?
master from commit 2acdcb2374e448371b173feb03650d8d6db8aba2 pulled some hours ago. It's my own build with --enable-kde4. When I revert your commit, this problem disappears.

BTW we have similar reports for Windows, there is one from 2011 (!) - Bug 33985, but I saw a new one some month ago (can't find it now).

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> but I saw a new one some month ago (can't find it now).
Ah... found it, but it's about a different problem. Sorry for the false alarm.

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> but I saw a new one some month ago (can't find it now).
Ah... found it, but it's about a different problem. Sorry for the false alarm.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Ok - the LO shell doesn't see any events, because these are queued and no one is running the qt main loop.

I'm currently looking into QTimer stuff. It looks like it blocks all Timers, if I open a Dialog from a timer event. There seems to be a race somewhere in the Qt event loop handling (wich is actually glib in Qt 4.8).

The FormatCells dialog is huge compared to most other dialogs. If I block on any dialog with gdb and just press continue, the event handling / QTimers are dropped. This happens with all dialogs in gdb.

So this change makes thuings definitly worse. If I won't find a workaround today for the strange QTimer handling, I'll revert them.

BTW - for me LO just works fine, if you directly open any application and not the shell.

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Ok - the LO shell doesn't see any events, because these are queued and no one is running the qt main loop.

I'm currently looking into QTimer stuff. It looks like it blocks all Timers, if I open a Dialog from a timer event. There seems to be a race somewhere in the Qt event loop handling (wich is actually glib in Qt 4.8).

The FormatCells dialog is huge compared to most other dialogs. If I block on any dialog with gdb and just press continue, the event handling / QTimers are dropped. This happens with all dialogs in gdb.

So this change makes thuings definitly worse. If I won't find a workaround today for the strange QTimer handling, I'll revert them.

BTW - for me LO just works fine, if you directly open any application and not the shell.

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back. It takes me for ever to compile LO as I only have an XP with 2GB of memory! Also, as I only do this every few months I always have to relearn git and compiling LO.

Irrespective as to whether I use Ctrl-1, from the menu bar edit->Format cells or right clicking I do now get the complete dialog. Previously I was only getting it with ctrl-1 and from the menu bar edit->Format Cells. However, the dialog doesn't present itself smoothly, it appears to have 2 or more attempts to draw the dialog before it settles down.

With 4.2.3, cloned from git, more often than not I can't start calc, it just hangs immediately after presenting the sheet, unless I delete the LO config directory AND move libkde4bello.so and libvclplug_kde4lo.so out of the way. This might be unrelated to the patch for this bug as kde4 integrating with LO is buggy, IMHO. However, when I do move libkde4bello.so and libvclplug_kde4lo.so out of the way the Format Cells dialog presents itself smoothly albeit a bit more slowly than when I use LO 4.2.2.

Overall, I think we're probably better off without the patch unless the above issues can be resolved.

Alex

[Mcmurchy1917-bugzilla (mcmurchy1917-bugzilla)]

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back. It takes me for ever to compile LO as I only have an XP with 2GB of memory! Also, as I only do this every few months I always have to relearn git and compiling LO.

Irrespective as to whether I use Ctrl-1, from the menu bar edit->Format cells or right clicking I do now get the complete dialog. Previously I was only getting it with ctrl-1 and from the menu bar edit->Format Cells. However, the dialog doesn't present itself smoothly, it appears to have 2 or more attempts to draw the dialog before it settles down.

With 4.2.3, cloned from git, more often than not I can't start calc, it just hangs immediately after presenting the sheet, unless I delete the LO config directory AND move libkde4bello.so and libvclplug_kde4lo.so out of the way. This might be unrelated to the patch for this bug as kde4 integrating with LO is buggy, IMHO. However, when I do move libkde4bello.so and libvclplug_kde4lo.so out of the way the Format Cells dialog presents itself smoothly albeit a bit more slowly than when I use LO 4.2.2.

Overall, I think we're probably better off without the patch unless the above issues can be resolved.

Alex

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 77687 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 77687 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Misc-drazil (misc-drazil)]

I have this problem also, I am running Kubuntu 14.04 on 64 bit.

I notice that it does not happen initially when I select format cells, unfortunately I am not certain of the catalyst, but maybe it is saving the file, but not advanced features I am certain. I do this regularly and with a manual click, after a few cells are typed and a little copy-cut and pasting is done the file is saved, and then this transparency problem occurs with the right click format cells menu/dialogue. This problem is not a crash to Desktop, but I must close and re-open Loffice to get the menu to activate.

( I also have encountered a similar sort of time initiated problem with importing pictures into a spreadsheet. After some time generally I have to save before importing a picture as the program will Crash-to-desktop. I only mention this because it will generally work initially. )

I will update if I can narrow the issue to a pinpoint.

[Misc-drazil (misc-drazil)]

I have this problem also, I am running Kubuntu 14.04 on 64 bit.

I notice that it does not happen initially when I select format cells, unfortunately I am not certain of the catalyst, but maybe it is saving the file, but not advanced features I am certain. I do this regularly and with a manual click, after a few cells are typed and a little copy-cut and pasting is done the file is saved, and then this transparency problem occurs with the right click format cells menu/dialogue. This problem is not a crash to Desktop, but I must close and re-open Loffice to get the menu to activate.

( I also have encountered a similar sort of time initiated problem with importing pictures into a spreadsheet. After some time generally I have to save before importing a picture as the program will Crash-to-desktop. I only mention this because it will generally work initially. )

I will update if I can narrow the issue to a pinpoint.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 86657 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 86657 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 83053 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Momonasmon (momonasmon)]

*** Bug 83053 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Tomislav (hefest)]

I don't have an upstream user account, so please don't mind me commenting here:

Judging by upstream comments under #73115, a solution was supposed to be in place for version 4.2.3.
I am running LO 4.2.8.2 (on Ubuntu 14.04) and I see the issue still present: unpredictable transparent cell format windows when opend using the context menu.

Opening the format window using Ctrl-1 hadn't occurred to me before, but it seems to reliably get around the issue. Thanks for the tip!

Still, this is quite a serious issue because if my own experience is anything to go by (struggling with it for maybe a year now), a lot of users may be getting a bad user experience for a long time...

[Jan-Marek Glogowski (jmglogow)]

Is this still a problem with current LO 4.4 / 5.0?

There were a lot of fixes in the KDE4 VCL backend. At least I don't have any more problems based on the KDE event handling and redrawing.

And there also weren't any more duplicates added since a year.

If you have additional KDE4 related bugs, please open a new bug report.

If the bug still exists for you, please reopen it.

[Francesco (sputnik63)]

I submitted bug 83053 No more problems in Version: 5.0.2.2 Build ID: 00m0(Build:2)
I made steps described by me and now all it's ok

[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.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Hi Marcus, it seems that I filed this bug over 5 years ago but I stopped using Kubuntu when the 14.10 release went EOL.

The upstream issue is showing as being KDE specific so I am unable to confirm that the issue has been fixed.

However, comment #30 was posted 4 years ago and with nothing since I think it's safe to close this one as fixed.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Ok, thanks for the update Paul. Seeing that it’s your bug, you’re welcome to close it :)

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Closing as fixed in the absence of any recent reports.