Hello,
I don't know which version of libre office you are using currently however if it's about a year old I suspect you can see this evil bug within libreoffice calc:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71409Thanks to many contributors involved it's being fixed as of libreoffice 5.4.1.
But still I am seeing different fortunatelly less evil issues with libreoffice calc input line however I can't find the relevant tdf bugs. These are not new they are there for years however now I have a bit more spare time to discuss them, so here is my little rant related to that.
I'm using libreoffice 5.4.2.2.0 with GTK3 VCL backend on arch linux and I am seeing this:
- Start orca and libre office
- Notice how the navigation over empty cells feels responsive
- Jump to the empty cell of your choice
- Type in the word hello and notice again how responsive the orca feetback to typing is.
- Now you will probably noticed orca reporting the focus change or window state change I'm not sure which of these. It simply says something like Cell XY. It's likelly that change has been processed after you are finished typing or it might have been reported in the middle as you were typing.
- Now the text is typed into expanded calc input line, all significant accessibility events are processed you are just simply waiting to perform yet another point from my steps.
- So just to ensure the previous assumptions regarding all the events are processed wait a few seconds e.g. 3 or 5 seconds so everything settles.
- Now press the right arrow key only once and start counting in the background feeling a lag like hell.
- The fact you have leaved the input line placing focus on a cell to the right of a cell you have just edited is reported after three seconds or even more.
Yes I understand this is not critical as we can stil use libre office and we don't have to reopen the document after 10 or so actions but this still significantly slows down the work.
- If you are not anoyed at this point please press left arrow key and you should immediatelly change the focus to the cell you have put the word hello into.
- Now press F2 key on your keyboard to expant the cell editor aka input line again and please do also start counting how much it will take the libreoffice and the whole accessibility stack to process what you have just done until it alerts you to the fact you have expanded a line editor.
- Is it some five seconds or how much have you to wait at this point?
- As the wait is over orca will report something like cell A1 hello
- Now use left and arrow keys to navigate over the text typed into the expanded cell editor. Do you feel it's lag free? Because I do.
- Now press the enter key to close the input line confirming the changes if any.
- Do you see another three seconds delay? I bet you would feel the same if you have pressed esc key instead of the enter key if you wanted to discard not confirm the editing changes.
- Now think a bit. Waiting for the orca reporting the editor has expanded is not perhaps critical. So please up arrow back to the cell A1 where you have typed in the word hello, press F2 to expand the input line and try pressing left and right arrow keys multiple times in random order.
- Can you feel the event stream blocked? I definatelly can. I can press arrow keys up to 10 times if I'm quick until orca becomes responsive again. And what's interesting I have pressed some keys up to 10 times however only one event got reported at the end.
I am really sorry I am putting all that this way however I just would like to capture my feeling and send it accross wires to you interested and even possibly to the developers.
I would compare this experience to an explanation where something is blocking an UI thread. You know this is bad practice to run time intensive tasks inside an UI thread. Imagine mouse would stop reacting for some five seconds for you appearing at the different corner of a screen instead of slowly shifting there as you move it.
There is nothing intensive going on. For example editing a file in nautilus might be considered similar and there is almost no lag.
Thanks and greetings
Peter
