Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 59551
"Combine" converts text to Bézier curve
Last modified: 2006-10-19 17:33:52 UTC
When you combine to objects, one of them having an attached text, the text is converted to something awful (could be polygon, or bezier). Please see the attached screenshot.
Created attachment 32568 [details] Screenshot
can you give a step-by-step description to reproduce the problem?
Sure. 1. Create an open polygon line (it's near the polygon tool on the toolbar 2. Break it 3. insert text to one of the lines 4. combine it all
hmm, the text is converted to a Bézier curve looking like being outlined for me; I can't reproduce your problem. Could you try with OOo 2.0.1 RC5 ? http://download.openoffice.org/680/
I have tried it, but the behaviour was the same. Please, try it on the attached document - select all and combine. If it does work, please send me the results (I'm curious about what is the problem)
Created attachment 32655 [details] Almost testcase
Created attachment 32659 [details] combined all in problem results in no problem
The file noproblem.odg _DOES HAVE_ the problem, too. Try - selecting the only object on the page and editing points - or inspect the file content.xml in noproblem.odg. You'll see only one "svg:path" element with no text
Ok, text converted to Bézier curve on combine. confirmed on Windows XP Pro SP2 with OOo 2.0.1
AFAIK this works as designed. Even version OOo 1.0 behaved that way. what else should happen when combining two drawing objects? Maybe you looked for the "group" function, would that be possible?
Well, this is THE question. I really don't know whether some of these requirements are desirable/achivable: 1. Combine & break should be inverse of each other 2. Combined objects should look the same as broken objects. The same applies to connect. I haven't used group, because I didn't want to select all lines as one, but I wanted to edit the points of the connected curve while still being connected. As it is, the combine/connect function is just unusable on objects with attached text (or you think people want that outlined text?). The solution could be to abolish text in objects completly, but allow anchoring text boxes to points on the curve etc. What do you think? And what is the sense in converting text to bezier curves and outlining it?
Maybe the developer can explain a bit about this feature. Reassigned.
AW: Well, i can just say that it works as designed at the moment. Combine is nothing else than adding all (Poly)Polygons to a single PolyPolygon object. This is done with closed polygons. When You do it with lines, the lines are converted to closed polygons, too (check with F8 point mode to see). Also, the text is converted to curves. The function is available if all of the selected objects are convertable to polygons. There is no special handling for text. The function is primarily for combining closed filled areas, e.g a ellipse combined with text will just leave the text empty since it's a PolyPolygon now with XOR fill rule. I think it makes not much sense to change that, it may be wanted. There is no way to 'guess' what is wanted. Maybe You were more intending to get the lines connected to a single polygon again, then You should use 'Connect', not combine.
Yes, could be the problem is not in the "combine" function, but in the ability to attach text. BTW I tried the connect function and it does exactly the same thing...
AW: Yes, connect is a geometric processing method. Those methods all transform text to polygons, to do that geometric transformations. If You want to keep the text, there are two possibilities: (1) cut the text from the object, do Your changes, paste it there again (2) create a text object independent from Your object Geometric operations need geometric data, so the text is changed. I think when You do geom ops between a text and a shape (e.g. ellipse) and nothing happens, this would be an error. Since it works as inteded, i will close this now.