User:Elmagnifico

=Joining OpenOffice.org= (From Elmagnifico: Also known as dashboard5432)

To Whom It May Concern,

_____My name is Jon. I'm with 4 students, including myself from WSU. (Worcester State University) We've join this project as part of a class requirement. Our professor is head of the computer science department, and the course he was planning to teach us was Object Oriented design. I imagine that this class was designed to teach us some techniques for programming. However, our professor, in his great wisdom, saw that it was more important for us to be familiar with open source projects. (An interesting yet exciting change.) Basically, this means that the course is about my group learning about OpenOffice.org, while the other groups are working on other projects.

_____Up to this day, my group is most likely the first group of students from WSU to join the OpenOffice.org project. In a way, it is exciting to be a part of such a well organized project, but at the same time, whether we like it or not, we're representing our school in a way. This makes our experience in OpenOffice.org somewhat stressful, knowing that this is going to be a major learning experience for both my group and professor, and that our progress could affect the way our school is viewed from the OpenOffice.org team. The benefits of having chosen OpenOffice.org, are that we will gain valuable experience that otherwise could not be gained from a school textbook or class lecturing.

_____Having time to reflect so far, it is undoubtedly amazing how much time has already gone by. Our class is already more than half way over, along with midterm presentations coming up for our class grade. This concerns us because by now we were hoping to have already started on a bug fix, and yet we still have more to learn before we can do that. (Like I said, somewhat stressful) Although so much time has gone by with what appears to be little progress, the fact of the matter is that we've gained something valuable from being here, and the fact the time has flown by might mean that we're actually doing something right, because we enjoy what we're learning.

JLF

Our Progress with OpenOffice.org
I'll begin by summarizing what we've accomplished from the time we've started working with OOo4Kids.


 * 1) We have downloaded, compiled, and installed OOo4Kids. (A task I had never done before)
 * 2) We've made contact with one of the team organizers
 * 3) We've been shown how to rebuild lines of code with special symbols
 * 4) We've been shown how to use gdb by the team organizer (special thanks to eric for generously giving us his time)

How to accomplish these steps
Thankfully, there is plenty of documentation on the wiki pages explaining how to complete these steps. Since there is already enough information out there, I'll simply post some of the links to these pages.

To download, compile, and install OO4Kids, read these links:

http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/EnvironmentSetup/Linux http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/EnvironmentSetup
 * For linux:
 * For a different operating system:

To contact one of the developers from OpenOffice.org, subscribe to their mailing lists on the following link. (Send them an email saying that you would like subscribe.) N/A

To rebuild the OOo4Kids source code with symbols, read this link: http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/User:Jblairsmith

To get an idea of using gdb, read this link: http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms/gdbBasics

It may not look like much, but because this is the first time we've ever done this kind of work, we have gained some valuable experience as well as programming skills to later to come; and there is still more for us to learn until the semester ends.


 * NOTE: For a detailed explanation of how we accomplished the previous steps, see http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/User:Matt
 * This link is from a student who is part of our group

Our Goals

 * 1) First and foremost, we hope to get a good grade from our instructor. (Who wouldn't...)
 * 2) Second, we would like to understand the information we've been given well enough to the point where we can finish at least one bug; but if not, we can always leave behind good documentation for others to follow.
 * 3) Third, we would like use what we learn as part of our resumes.
 * 4) Forth, we would like to leave a good name for our school with the OpenOffice.org team.

=Bugs at Work=

Issue 104344
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=104344

Progress
12/09/2010, Thursday

I've had some time to checkout a few things about OOo4Kids. While searching for information about the New Writer Wizard, I came across a link relating to a crash occurring in OOo4Kids Impress. (The link is posted above) When using the Presentation Wizard to create a new slideshow, a crash can be triggered by going to the 3rd page, after selecting any one of the rotating wheel effects, and by clicking either create OR cancel near the end of the preview. (see the above link for clarity) The end result is the crash. This bug was reported on August 19th, 2009; and so far no one has fixed the bug.

The file responsible for the Presentation Wizard is at this location:

../my_OOo4Kids/sd/source/ui/dlg/dlgass.cxx

According to the report, the cause of the problem is believed to be when the preview ends, the program is trying to close a window that doesn't exist. A few solutions have been proposed. One is (1) to disable the create AND cancel buttons until the preview has ended. (This is considered a crude fix.) Another way is (2) to add timer. (This is considered even more of crude fix because timers can be unpredictable.) The problem with both these fixes are that they simply avoid or hide the problem, without getting to the root of the matter: a segmentation fault due to a non-existing window; and for that reason especially, both solutions are considered unsuitable.

My idea is to add a function for the create AND cancel buttons, that will check if certain parts of the Presentation Wizard have already been terminated, or no longer exist. If those conditions are met, then the program has no reason to close them, since they are not there, and the problem should go away. There might be other problems along the way, but its a start.

I've tried running a back trace using gdb, and I came up with the following. When the crash occurs:

1) There's a problem with slideshow.uno.so, located at

../my_OOo4Kids/slideshow/unxlngi6.pro/lib/slideshow.uno.so

2) There's a problem with libsdli.so.

3) There's a problem with libvclli.so.

4) There's a problem with libvclplug_genli.so.

I mention this because originally I was planning to rebuild ../my_OOo4Kids/slideshow/unxlngi6.pro with symbols, in an attempt to see what slideshow.uno.so was doing during the crash; but I ended up with a build error. The terminal mentioned some problems with "animationnodes," and couldn't finish the build as a result. I'm hoping to find a solution to the build error, in case I would need observe slideshow.uno.so, and other files for hidden problems.

=Links= I've listed some links here to make it easier to find wiki pages related to my group

Main Page
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Applications/WorcesterStateUniversity

Group Members
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/User:Jblairsmith
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/User:Matt

Our IRC Meetings
 * http://ooo4kids.org/index.php/IRCMeetings/october2010/6th_october
 * http://ooo4kids.org/index.php/IRCMeetings/october2010/13rd_october

Classrooms (They show how to use some of the developer tools)
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms/DownloadSources
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms/SvnBasics
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms/PatchBasics
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms/gdbBasics

New Writer Wizard
 * http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/NewWriterWizard

Bugs
 * http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=104344

Other Links
 * http://eric.bachard.free.fr/OOoLight/patches/september_2010/svx_insert_no_close/svx_insert_no_close_22_sept.diff