Bug 148250 - Bug in LibreOffice Internet Network Linked to English Dictionaries Extension Update Notifications
Summary: Bug in LibreOffice Internet Network Linked to English Dictionaries Extension ...
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Extensions (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
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Depends on:
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Reported: 2022-03-29 13:18 UTC by Radish
Modified: 2023-01-17 09:03 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

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Description Radish 2022-03-29 13:18:56 UTC
Description:
I am referring to the English Dictionary extension package maintained by Marco Pinto. The extension is available from here: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/english-dictionaries

Specifically I am referring to the ability of LibreOffice to automatically give notification that a new version of the English Dictionary Package (extension) is available for download. This capability of notification has never worked in LibreOffice.

I had some time ago been in touch with Marco Pinto and suggested that he might want to get this working in both OpenOffice and LibreOffice (as at that time both used the exact same extension). Cutting a long story short, in response, for the 01 January 2022 release of the English Dictionaries Extension, Marco released two 'editions' of the extension one for OpenOffice and a separate one for LibreOffice. Going forward from there he would always release separated 'editions' of the speller extension. What was at the bottom of that was that, in an attempt to get the notifications of a new version available working, Marco had provided an extension that contained the correct network address for OpenOffice to connect to and another extension for LibreOffice with the correct address for it to connect to to check for updates to the extension.

Again cutting a long story short. On release of these two extensions on 01 Feb. 2022 I tested with OpenOffice and LibreOffice if the update check was working automatically — as Marco had intended. The result was that the update check failed for both OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

Fast forward by around a month and a post at OpenOffice Forums was made by an OpenOffice user querying why OpenOffice was giving him notification that a new download of a dictionary was available — was this legitimate or was it a security issue? He had never seen the notification before, nor had anyone else, and hence there was some suspicion. What this meant, of course, was that for some reason the extension for OpenOffice suddenly started working, whereas previously it had not done so. I queried this with Marco Pinto and he said that Apache had a bug issue in their infrastructure but had recently fixed the bug -- and hence the update notification routine of OpenOffice suddenly started working. Good for Apache and OpenOffice in fixing their network issue.

However, the same has not started happening for LibreOffice. I would therefore like to raise this as a 'bug' issue. Marco Pinto has done what he can do to get the update notifications working for the English Dictionaries Package that he maintains in that he has tried to make sure that the extension is trying to connect to the correct network address where it can get the information it seeks requiring information on update availability. So the maintainer of the extension has done what he can. So now I want to report this as a bug, not for the extension (in theory that should be working okay in this respect), but for LibreOffice itself. I strongly suspect that the reason why the update notification doesn't work in LibreOffice is because of some bug in LibreOffice's infrastructure, could be software, could be network configuration, that is preventing the notifications from working. This definitely exists and needs fixed. If Apache OpenOffice can fix it that would suggest that LibreOffice could fix it too.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a version of the extension that was released on 2022.01.01 or a later version (but NOT the most recent version).
2. Shut down LibreOffice and then relaunch it.
3.In theory the extension/LibreOffice should do an automatic connect to LibreOffice server to see if an extension update is available. (This does not work so nothing will happen because the check is failing.)

Actual Results:
Dealt with above.

Expected Results:
Dealt with above. Ideally the check should have worked.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
If you want to check how this works for OpenOffice then just experiment with OpenOffice and you will see how Apache treats this update notification issue.
Comment 1 Marco A.G.Pinto 2022-03-29 13:50:57 UTC
Thanks for the report!
Comment 2 Xisco Faulí 2022-05-02 11:51:28 UTC
(In reply to Marco A.G.Pinto from comment #1)
> Thanks for the report!

Hello marco,
is it something you could fix ?
Comment 3 Marco A.G.Pinto 2022-05-02 12:03:10 UTC
@Xisc0

I tried to change the link in the Gerrit commit, but there is no usable link place there.

In OpenOffice, an admin needed to activate the autoupdates for the extension to tip new releases.

Maybe in LibreOffice, the same is needed?

Possibly Áron Budea knows?