Open Source – Homepage von Andreas Mantke

Further Research on Online – Modul Draw

I already got some issues with my version of an Online version based on LibreOffice technology. The code it had some issues with the edit mode of Draw module in connection with LibreOffice core master, but not with the fork/branch of CO-25.04. This made me curious and I build two versions of CODE (the Collabora Online Development Edition). I build the first one against the fork/branch of CO-25.04. If I run this version with ‚make run‘ the example Draw document showed up as expected (see screenshot below).

Then I tried, if the edit mode also worked. And this was the case (see screenshot below).

Because I’m curious, if CODE also works with the LibreOffice core master, the source code of the Open Source project, I build CODE also using the LibreOffice master. I did a ‚make run‘ and opened the Draw example document again. You could see what happened in the screenshot below.

The Online version didn’t show any content of the document yet. Because I clicked into the document (where the text box should be displayed) you see some boundary of a box.

This showed that CODE and the developer from the eco system company, which created this fork of LibreOffice Online didn’t use LibreOffice technology anymore, at least not fully. They created some changes in their Online version and in addition in their fork of the LibreOffice core and didn’t commit them back to the upstream project. This shows that they don’t really take care of the LibreOffice project and it’s community but only of their own commercial interests. They have no issue to use the resources of The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community, but are reluctant about contributing back to the project and the community.

I think it’s not appropriate to use donation funded resources (like those from The Document Foundation and LibreOffice) and resources of a world wide community (e.g. the marketing, localization, documentation work etc.) to develop, test and build a product of a commercial company. It’s also not appropriate, if such company uses donation funded resouces of another Open Source project for their developer marketing.

Research On Issues With Online – Module Draw

I got some issues with running the Draw Module of the LibreOffice Online / Free Online Office. I run my Free Online Office version (master) using the latest master version of the LibreOffice core (build on the same machine by myself). I can start Draw with an odg-document. This odg-document contains besides graphics also text boxes. Once I load the example document in online it shows the boxes with the text inside (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with LibreOffice core master

But once I clicked into the text box to edit the text, the textbox disappeared and I got a big grey area instead (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with LibreOffice core master in edit mode

I first thought this might be an issue with the code of my Free Online Office code. But that wasn’t the case. I made an experiment. I run my online version using the LibreOffice core branch for Collabora 25.04 and opened the same example odg-document with it. The document loaded and I could view it’s content (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with Collabora core 25.04

Then I clicked into the text box to edit the text and it happens that I could do this without any issues (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with Collabora core 25.04 in edit mode

Thus there is no issue in my Free Online Office but in the core module of LibreOffice. There are commits / patches inside the Collabora 25.04 branch of core which didn’t made it’s master. Thus you can’t create a fully working online office using the LibreOffice core master. You have to use its fork from the branch Collabora 25.04.

This shows that the eco system companies didn’t submit all their code changes to the upstream project, in this case the LibreOffice core master branch. This is contrary to their promise that they fully support the LibreOffice project. If that would be the case they would contribute / commit their patches to the LibreOffice core master first and then adapt them to their product releases.

They have no issue to use the resources of the LibreOffice project (funded by donations) for their development work, patch review, localization, marketing etc. but apart from that cook their own soup. It’s also disturbing that they use for their developer marketing the public resources of another Open Source project (Jitsi) (funded by donations) instead of running their own videoconference server.

JavaScript Project with vulnerabilities

I checken again a bigger open source JS project for vulnerable packages with npm audit and got:

41 vulnerabilities (1 low, 12 moderate, 26 high, 2 critical)

This vulnerabilities stayed for months or more than a year or two nearly unchanged yet. That’s a desaster for an open source project, developed currently only by professional and payed developers.

There are fixes available for all this vulnerabilities within updated JS packages, but nobody seemed to care on fixing that.

Brother MFC-7320 And OpenSUSE Leap 15.4

I used this combined printer, scanner and fax machine with openSUSE for some years now. But it is always a lot of effort to get it working with a fresh Linux environment, e.g. after a hardware change. There are the packages and tools from Brother, which you could download from their website, but trat doesn’t make the complete and successful setup of the printer and scanner functionality. It is necessary that you install also some 32-bit packages:

zypper in -f glibc-32bit libusb-0_1-4-32bit libusb-1_0-0-32bit

Worked Further On LibreOffice Online Code And Docker Image

The Javascript packages in the former git repository of LibreOffice Online and ist fork were not up to date. Thus I hat to work on update them. This and the code update took a bunch of my spare time.

I had also to work on the configuration of the shrinkwrap/shrinkpack tooling. The former configuration and especially the shrinkwrap.json.in file blocked the build process of the docker file. The naming of the shrinkpacked files changed.

Once this was fixed the browser part of LibreOffice was build sucessfully. And finally I was able to build a first lool docker container and start it.

I made a first test and could copy the loolwsd.xml from the container and also view the container log.

Updated The LibreOffice Online Code And JavaScript Modules

I worked further on the update of the LibreOffice Online source code during the last days. I brought it on par with its fork first. In parallel I worked on the JavaScript modules and were able to move them to newer versions. This fixes also some vulnerabilities, from critical to mid category. The npm tool doesn’t complain about vulnerabillities in the JavaScript area of the source code anymore yet.

Update JavaScript Modules Of LOOL

I had a look at the ‚zoo‘ of JavaScript modules which are living in the browser part of LibreOffice Online and found a lot of outdated versions there. This modules need an update to newer versions. I’m working currently on this task step by step.

I also got the message in the shell about vulnarabilities in the modules, some of them classified high and one critical. I fixed a bunch of them with an npm command, thus there is no critical vulnarability left. The high classified dimished from 15 to five.

Test Of Plone 6.0a2 With Collective.Addons

I installed the current alpha release of Plone 6 (a2) using buildout. I created a Python 3.9 virtual environment and used it to build a Plone 6.0a2 instance. I could start this instance in forground mode with ‚instance fg‘ and it was available at port 8080 on localhost.

This shows me a site where I could add a new Plone site to the instance. I used the advance button and could add the ‚plone.volto‘ add-on to it. This makes it more easy to use the new Volto frontend later (see screenshot below).

Once I finished the first steps with a new Plone 6.0-a2 buildout I made some further steps and added one of my Plone add-ons to the buildout script. I ran the buildout again and was able to include my add-on, named ‚collective.addons‘.

But once I started the instance in forground mode I got a traceback which points me to a line in the configure.zcml of the add-on. I had to comment out the line with ‚IncludeDependencies‘ in this file and everything went fine. I could install the add-on in the Plone site and also use its content types. It was able to view the content types within the Plone classic frontend. But there is currently no complete view of the content types within the new Volto frontend available. I’ll work on this during the next weeks.

Further Short Volto Test

I activated the blocks feature on the Dexterity page type of Plone 6 with Volto and I get a new experience with the Volto frontend. Everything on the page are now similar to the work in a current WordPress site. I could move aroud this blocks very easily. And I found out that I could insert a blog for an image. I could set the size of this blog to small and align the image to the left side. I move this image block to the top and the first text block adapted its wide to the image block. You could see this behavior on the screenshot below.

Short Test With Volto On Plone-6-dev

I created an instance from the development branch of Plone 6. The source code of this branch could be cloned from the Github repository of the Open Source project: https://github.com/plone/buildout.coredev

I also cloned the Volto repository from Github: https://github.com/plone/volto and started with building the backend. Then run ‚yarn start‘ and fixed the missing dependencies, especially ‚razzle‘ (yarn add razzle). Once this was done yarn build the Volto client and server. I could get the Volto interface at ‚localhost:3000‘ yet. But it is missing a Plone instance, because it had not been up.

I fixed this by running the instance of my Plone 6 buildout, created a new Plone site with the default name ‚Plone‘. This site could be reached in the (old) classic Plone interface at ‚localhost:8080/Plone‘.

I had to install the ‚plone.restapi‘ inside the new Plone site (within the settings site under ‚add-ons‘). The Volto interface at ‚localhost:3000‘ could connect to the Plone instance yet.

I made a first test with the new Volto interface and created a new Page inside the Plone instance (inside a folder) to test its functionality. I copied a text from a popular Open Source projects website for this test. I could paste it directly into the new page. Then I tried to insert a grafic into the page. But this functionality wasn’t available in my Volto interface yet. I could integrate this grafic within the edit feature of the classic Plone interface and display it also on the Volto interface. The screenshot at the top shows the result of my short test.