Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 50804
Custom animations (motion paths) break connectors
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:21:02 UTC
If an object, to which a connector is attached, is animated with a motion path, the connection between the object and the connector breaks when the animation starts. Attached is a minimal presentation with three circles connected through three straight connectors. Two of the connectors use custom glue points (in the middle of the circle), while the third connector uses default glue points. The upper and lower circles are animated with a "Right" motion path while the circle in the middle stays at its initial position. The effect intuitively expected is that the connectors attached to the animated circles follow the animation with their corresponding ending. The observed effect is that only the circles move during the animation and that the connection between the circles and their connectors break upon animation start. This issue is loosely related to issue 37778.
Created attachment 27226 [details] Presentation showing a problem with animated objects linked with connectors.
Reproducible.
Reassigned.
This behaviour is by design, and will not be (easily) changed. As a matter of fact, implementing such a behaviour where animations constitute 'live' object movements would be largely inefficient. For reference, PPT also does not behave that way.
And closing the issue.
The trick in convincing people to use OOimpress instead of PPT is being *better* than PPT.
@haui: maybe. But first of all, we have to be _as good as_ PPT. The rewrite of the slideshow was certainly a huge leap in that direction. But another important quality-of-implementation issue is clearly animation speed and overall smoothness, and there, doing anything largely different than PPT, which on top of that costs CPU, is IMHO not warranted. Basically, I simply consider this feature to be of too little importance to sacrifice overall slideshow performance.
@thb: I consider your reaction of closing this with "WONT FIX" inappropriate. Instead, you could have offered to change the type of this issue from DEFECT to ENHANCEMENT or FEATURE. Regarding importance: Educational-quality presentations need animations that visualize complex procedures. Such animations can be complex and need more than bouncing bubbles that only annoy the auditorium. Instead, OOimpress offers a bunch of annoying and absolutely useless predefined "motion paths" like "8-point star" and so on. To become better than PPT, it is not necessary to imitate all FUD M$ "invents". Regarding performance: My screen saver is able to display arbitrary complex animations, I never dreamt to embed into a presentation. A line stretching instead of simply moving will surely not overstrain my dated PC.
@haui: I apologize if my wording was out of place here. But to quote from the issue status description, WONTFIX stands for 'the problem described is an issue which will never be fixed'. And, like it or not, that's the state of affairs with this one. In case you're interested, we can start to discuss about the internals of the slideshow engine, and why the feature you've requested cannot be provided by the current implementation. But I'd propose doing that offline.