Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 14154
broken line/curve Connect function
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:40:43 UTC
The OO-Draw Connect function, to connect two or more lines/curves, often and unpredictably joins the "wrong" ends of the lines together. I cannot find a reliable way of predicting/controlling which ends of two curves the Connect function will join! This bug has appeared in all versions up to 1.1beta (I've yet to try beta2). I've attached a *.sxd file containing some examples of this. Bryan
Created attachment 6046 [details] examples of using the Connect function to join some lines/curves: often the wrong ends are connected
OpenOffice connects the lines in quite a logic way: it is important to know that a line has a start and endpoint following the direction it was drawn. When you have two lines drawn the startpoint of the second will be connected to the endpoint of the first.Just draw two lines and have a look how they get connected. Then draw them in the other direction and have a look whats happening if you connect them. Thanks for your help.
Closed.
You need to look at this again. OpenOffice *does not* follow this logic under all conditions. While under some conditions the start-point of one line is joined to end-point of the other, this is NOT always the case. In my example drawing, your Connect-logic is violated by the the first line-pair (left-most) on slide-1 and both the first and the third pairs on slide-2. My impression is that OO does indeed check to see which endpoints are closest together therefore it's not simply a case of startpoint-to-endpoint connection. The poisition of the lines does make a difference. It's not enough for OO-features to "work for me". Ask yourself: is this feature actually functional for most users under most conditions? I've struggled for hours trying to get two lines to connect in a sensible and predictable way and believe me, this feature is broken. In fact, restricting users to only being able to connect lines startpoint to endpoint is very bad design. This means that for 75% of cases, a user is unable to join two lines in the desired way (i.e. a user may want to join start-to-start, end-to-end, end-to-start as well as start-to-end).
Reopened.
Indeep there seem to be some inconsistency. For making this visible just add arrowheads to the lines for making start and endpoints distinguishable. Reassigned to Armin.
AW: I took a short look, maybe there is a incositency. I will take a deeper look for 2.0.
Why has this issue status "Resolved"? Now it is three years later and the "Connect"-function is still broken.
AW: Good question, this seems to have happened by error. Thanks for the hint! Reopening...
I think, that the way the connect command works is not good and it cannot be improved, because it tries to work on a selection of curves and the user has no possibility to determine which curve should be the first in the connected curve. In addition it turnes polylines into curves although this is not necessary. Therefor I suggest a new way to connect curves and polylinies, which work similar to the feature in CorelDRAW and Inkscape. I have submitted issue 70373, with a document attached, which describes in detail how I think it should work.
Setting to confirmed again.
set target from 2.x to 3.x according http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Target_3x
AW: Checked in DEV300m66 (with primtives). Checked the example. All chases connect nicely and 'intuitively'. With intutitively i mean as expected: The closest start/end points are connected. The internal algo has to 'guess' what the user wants, and connecting the closest start/end point pair seems intuitive. There is also the suggestion from regina(#i70373#) for an intuitive solution, but this task seems fixed to me. There is also no expansion to curve when not needed. The start path is the 'backmost' one, the order in which the paths get connected is from back to front, pairwise. Setting to fixed and closing.
W: Closing.