Bug#630466: libreoffice: HTML exports from calc suck

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz>]

On 14 June 2011 10:55, Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 10:34:35AM +0200, Michal Suchanek wrote:
>> There are numerous issues with HTML exports from Calc
>
> And you beliebve *anything* exporting HTML will produce proper HTML? No.
> Proper HTML is done by hand. Even Dreamweaevr or however all the tools are
> called are not producing well-formed HTML.

Other software being broken is not an excuse for all software being
broken. By this approach no bug would ever be fixed.

>
>>  - the "automatic" colors (the default black on white) are not recorded
>>    in the export. I am not sure if these "automatic" colors can change.
>>    LibreOffice does not seem to respond to theming of other parts of the
>>    system. Either way, the "automatic" colors must be exported for the
>>    document to look correctly when viewed in a web browser which may
>>    have text and background color different from LibreOffice.
>
> Then you should have done your table in a way this doesn't hapen
> or format it so that the scenario doesn't happen or use a website
> design where it doesn't happen. Don't expect HTML export knowing what you
> will use it in it can't. And HTML doesn't have "automatic colors" anyway.

The "automatic" colors in Calc are exported as undefined in HTML. That is wrong.

>
>>  - the text automatically spanning multiple cells (when it overflows a
>>    cell and the neigbour cell is empty) does not do so in HTML
>
> Of course not. The text is in one cell. That it just overflows that cell
> is so, but how should Calc know? it's text *inside that cell*. If you don't
> proper formatting in your sheet, don't blame others for that,

It does know, how else would it render the text over the other cells?

>
>>  - alignment is not reflected in HTML. Specifically I use right and left
>>    aligned columns next to each other with increased indent added to the
>>    left aligned column. There is no space between the two in the HTML
>
> ... which easily can be workarounded by fixing the HTML to use cellpadding.

Then the HTML export should include it. It sets all padding explicitly
to 0 resulting in this issue.

>
> Your point from the export is? Honestly, I don't see this as a "normal" bug.
> (I actually don't see this as a bug per se)

What is it then?

If the HTML export is not meant to be useful then disable it completely.

Regards

Michal