Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 120115
unconformant DOCX silently crashes on opening
Last modified: 2013-06-07 04:43:53 UTC
Created attachment 78514 [details] non-UTF8 OpenXML-like document Attached is document, generated by some intranet system. It violates 2.4 chapter of ISO by specifying non-UTF character set. // the application is targeted at Microsoft Ofice compatibility, not at specifications. And MS Office opens such documents just fine. MSO 2010 / 2003+CompatPack just open that documents easily. KingSoft Office for mobile phones refuses to do. OpenOffice.org Pro 3.3 (by i-rs.ru) also displayed an error and refused to open. AOOo 3.4 ... just disappears. It probably had crashed but no GUI, even no OS-standard app memory dumper shows. I run application from console to see if it would log something out - but silence in the stdout/stderr too. --- Best possible outcome would be MSO approach. Since you can edit arbitrary HTML/XML, you already do have a library of charsets and can transparently recode the document whil opening. Or at least AOOo should report the error to user and explicitly deny opening the document. But just silently crashing and closing without saying a word is not good outcome.
In latest version, it will report an error and message box with "General I/O error", which may be more friendly. (In reply to comment #0)
why not re-code it on the fly and still open ? It should not be very hard and it would be on par with MS Office in universality.
It's not only the re-coding issue, further more, it doesn't follow the Office OpenXML(OOXML) strictly.The OOXML standard is for MSO 2007/2010/2013, and gives how xml files will be organized under different dir. When you unzip the attachment, you can find its dir structure different from normal docx. The dir structure is one of essential keys for OpenOffice to judge its format, and which filter will be used. (In reply to comment #2)
Well, i'll have a look, though have to admit that the very MS Excel 2010 does not conform to OpenXML strictly :-)
I can confirm this defect. It doesn't open up. This in Windows Vista, AOO 3.4.1, HP.
Tried with 3.4.1 on Windows 7, 32-bit. No crash, but the file will not open. When launched from the Windows shell AOO does not appear to launch. When loading the file within AOO noting happens. No crash, no error, message. This is annoying, but not high severity.
(In reply to Rob Weir from comment #6) > Tried with 3.4.1 on Windows 7, 32-bit. No crash, but the file will not > open. When launched from the Windows shell AOO does not appear to launch. > When loading the file within AOO noting happens. No crash, no error, > message. > > This is annoying, but not high severity. When the application does not seem to launch from the Windows Explorer (shell), I have learned to open the Task Manager and see if there is a wedged instance running. When that is the case, new launches tend to short-circuit, apparently based on a determination that the app is already running. Reboot or simply terminating the running instance usually takes care of it. (If it doesn't seem to terminate, rebooting is the only answer.)