Collabora Online Weekly Meeting #69

Development
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Collabora Online Weekly Meeting #69

Date: Apr 21 2022

Next meeting: 28/04/2022

All minutes published on: Meeting Minutes - Collabora Online

Attendees (write your name):

  • Pedro, Szymon, Cor, Gabriel, Julien V. (NC), Gokay, Ezinne, Andras, Aron, Pranam, Michael, Kendy, Nicolas Christener, Tor,

Gabriel (1-and-1)

Welcome updates (Gokay)

  • released new CODE version yesterday with welcome dialog fixes – also for fallback
    • bugs fixed, should be mobile friendly too.
  • Andreas K improved the fallback dialog too (Pedro)
  • Still need to add a timer to spin the slides & close them automatically
  • Should add a timer to other dialogs eg. update-check (Pedro)

Forum (Pedro)

  • Thanks “joergmschulz” and “Gohrner“ for being so active (Trust Level 2 users) on the forum but also on GH etc
    • Also another more recent but very active user “cortrum” helping out left and right
    • thanks to all helping out!
  • Some more reports around configuration problems
    • Rashesh is being doing a great job hunting these down
    • And making sure what is related to multi host configuration and what is not
    • He is testing out different configuration environments and then he will report back
    • Specially with nginx, some users are not able to open document in the NC. Trying to reproduce it – but hit a dead-end and can’t progress this.
    • Federation Nextcloud share file not working, CO does not open file: https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/federation-nextcloud-share-file-not-open-on-collabora-online
      • (Szymon) this is quite complex because it does not work with normal local setup
        • it really requires production-like setup
        • In NC configuration we might need some special entries to setup that
  • “hanging up” does not happen with a public link generated by Nextcloud itself. It only happens when I’m actually logged in. I have no clue → can-not-create-doc-docx-and-odt
    • lots of lots, long discussion – why it hangs as a normal user but not a public link ?
      • Difference here is the Nextcloud side ? (Michael)
        • ping Nextcloud.

GitHub activity:

  • Some new issues reported – just ned to process them
  • Impress / notebookbar needs a fix – some inconsistencies; missing button to edit master-slides.

Nextcloud bits (Julien)

  • Font pieces:
    • still the same symptoms – compiling the latest branch, using with NC 24
      • up-loaded a bunch of extra font-files, a few TTFs etc.
      • check access logs opening document – see the font-end-point is requested
      • some fonts are downloaded – but don’t see them in the font list.
    • Can’t easily inject into existing documents: need to load a new one (Michael)
    • Can we get names from the font file ?
      • Yes code looks up name from font inside it (Tor)
    • May be related to how many spare kit processes are lying around (Tor)
    • Expectation: available to all users immediately ? (Tor)
      • perhaps a good idea to shut-down un-used pre-forked documents (Michael)
        • when the font list changes.
    • How important → that font files can be updated on the fly (?)
      • if downloaded font-file already; how important to re-download them, don’t care if it is immediate.
      • Updating fonts that are already downloaded brings a lot of problems (Tor)
        • they are memory mapped – SIGBUS etc.
        • VCL – no way to un-register temporary fonts.
      • Perhaps we should exit th eforkit in this case (Michael)
        • and just get that re-started.
    • 10am CET – will send an invite to Tor.
    • Can compile a short E-mail on the steps (Aron)
      • from testing this; and send it after the call.
    • Update from Julien
      • I can see the custom fonts in the UI’s list, the UI freezes when a custom font is selected
  • Desktop / PC locking / launching feature → next for Tor.
    • Getting locking information and then we can discuss how CO can pick up those details
  • UI switcher Add toggle for UI mode to menubar and notebookbar by juliushaertl · Pull Request #4254 · CollaboraOnline/online · GitHub (Szymon)
    • Some issues with the patch – need to implement browser storage, then it can be finished.
    • Getting this out is a high-priority (Gokay)
  • @Mentions – Julius (still?) writing up a spec.

Design bits (Pedro)

  • Feature request of comparing documents created
    • more people would like this – reporting on richdocuments side.
    • Could be something simpler: not a full-fledged comparison with three-up etc.
    • re-use what we have with track-changes.
    • Find this compare-documetns quite hard to understand (Michael)
      • to the point that it’s really hard to know what changed.
      • Focus on something people request – to compare with current document – might be easier
      • If there is a clear way and “compare is not it” to explain what happens we should do it
    • Compare to versions (Kendy)
      • new version is current version, and historic is ‘old’ version
      • would modify the document – is that what the users want ?
      • Would be useful in another use-case: in a document conflict on the storage
        • useful to present this as well; instead of only choice: keep / discard etc.
      • Some limited use-cases that are useful.
    • Horrifingly irritated by compare-documetns in LibreOffice (Michael)
  • Dark mode discussion: Add a dark mode · Issue #4382 · CollaboraOnline/online · GitHub
    • CSS vars are there, apparently users not happy with linear inverting of colors.
    • Andreas K. there and doing a summary of stuff that is already done
    • can we use the core-side here ? LibreOffice already has a theme for document page
    • AI : look at this and come up with a design (Kendy)
  • Lots of regressions fixed
  • Work from Rashesh to conver dialogs to async.
  • Introduced define print area on Calc
  • A.I.: Rename UI modes
    • Make sure that the configuration file accepts old and new values
    • Gokay looking at this.

Dialog widgets (Szymon)

  • Already merged – dialog for testing JSDialogs – can see a few widgets in different states.
  • Useful for designers already (Pedro)

22.05 bits (Gokay)

  • Postponing our beta release for 22.05 and want to add more features in the meantime – will push it out some weeks.

Other ongoing work (Szymon)

  • Formula-bar PR is ready for review, and Mert is testing / reviewing.

Android / iOS updates (Gokay)

  • Mobile – no bad feedback as far as we know now.

GitPod updates (Pedro)

  • we recommend 22.05 in our gitpod releases
  • thanks to Andras.

Next Meeting

28/04/2022