Impress doesn't thumbnail slides until scrolled to; makes slide list useless

[Adam Porter]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org-impress

Impress does not generate thumbnails for slides in the slide list until the slide is visible in the list. This causes long freezes while scrolling through the list, and makes it pretty pointless in the first place, because you can't just scroll down and click on the slide you want until you have already scrolled to it and waited for the thumbnail to be created.

This is very, very basic functionality. Impress will never surpass PowerPoint as long as it has issues like this.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Do you still have this problem with openoffice.org 1:2.4.1-1ubuntu2 in Ubuntu 8.04? You didn't mention which version you were using and you didn't use the OpenOffice Help->Report a bug option that includes that information automatically.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

Yes, it is in the OO version that's in Hardy.

[Neil Munro (neilmunro-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for your bug report however I cannot reproduce this in hardy, it may in fact be the size of presentation I used, I have attached a quick presentation with background images in the hopes it would pause as I scroll through the preview, but each slide loaded. I'm marking this as incomplete for now.

If you could provide the presentation you were working with for me to check I might be able to confirm this bug.

Thanks again.

[Neil Munro (neilmunro-deactivatedaccount)]

And the presentation I made.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Can you still reproduce this bug on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid)? On Intrepid it loads the thumbnails as fast as I can scroll through the list.

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

Well, considering that the version in Intrepid is the same version of OpenOffice that's in Hardy, there doesn't seem much point in testing it again... but I installed the packages from Intrepid and tested it anyway.

I opened a presentation I made this summer, the one that caused me to discover this behavior. The problem is still there. (It's the same version of Impress; I don't see how it could be solved by Ubuntu rebuilding the packages. Why am I asked to test over and over again when nothing's been changed to address the problem?)

Maybe your presentation is too simple. Mine is a 200 MB ODP file consisting of 23 slides, and most slides have multiple images. Generating a thumbnail of a slide doesn't happen instantly.

Impress makes thumbnails for all the slides that can fit in the list of slides, and then it stops. When I scroll down in the list, it starts making thumbnails for slides that are now visible. It doesn't make a thumbnail for a slide until you scroll the list so the slide is visible.

That's all there is to it. It's really that simple. The fix is simple enough in theory: just make Impress generate thumbnails for the other slides in a low-priority background thread.

(Soapbox: Yet again I am asked to test more packages, when it should already be clear that nothing has been done to address the stated problem. It takes enough time to file a bug report in the first place; it's a waste of time for me to test packages that haven't changed anything. Do you see what I mean?)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Adam Porter, is this issue reproducible for you in LibreOffice Impress? If so, could you bzip the 200 MB file and attach it to this bug so we may reproduce it?

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

[This is an automated message.]
There are no new official OpenOffice.org releases in Ubuntu packaging anymore => Won't Fix

If the problem persists, please mark this bug as "also affects project Libreoffice" or "also affects distribution Libreoffice (Ubuntu)" if that has not happened already.

Please leave references to upstream OpenOffice.org bugs in place to allow cross pollination.

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. This Ubuntu release has reached EOL for Desktops.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Since this bug hasn't been touched in a while and the Incomplete autoclose didn't work, I'm going to close it.

If you can still reproduce on a new version of Ubuntu, please reopen it.