Re: [libreoffice-users] google images and librewriter crash

Rich Giorgio wrote:
> I was searching for images on Google images and when I right click on an
> image and paste it into librewriter, the cpu usage goes to 100% and I
> have to force quit librewriter. This happens on all versions of
> librewriter from 3.x to 4.2 on Ubuntu (10.04 to 13.1). I've also seen it
> on Windows, but have not tested it as thoroughly. This does not happen
> in librecalc, impress, or draw. The drawback in writer is you may lose
> all your work once you paste an image. If you paste special -> bitmap it
> pastes the image.
>
> Can this crash be prevented or treated the same as the other libreoffice
> applications? Thank you!

It looks like a bug is already filed:
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60415
I've just signed up for an account on the bug tracker, so will add more 
info to that report when I can get in. In the meantime...

I can confirm this in LibreOffice Writer 4.0.4.2, copying from Mozilla 
SeaMonkey 2.23, on Windows Vista. Copying static images from a couple of 
other websites was no problem, so it seems to be partly to do with the 
way Google Images search works.

Copying from other websites into Writer, I first see a placeholder which 
is then replaced with the image. The time it takes to show the image 
increased with image size, so looks like LibreOffice gets a link to the 
image, then downloads it itself. However, the URL copied from Google 
isn't a link to an image on a web server (it begins "data:" rather than 
"http:") - I guess the image data is obtained via JavaScript or JSON or 
something in the web browser, but that link won't then work for another 
application. Not good that it crashes LibreOffice Writer though!

I'm not sure about Linux, but on Windows a "copy" operation can put data 
on the clipboard in several formats, and the "paste" operation can then 
use any one of those (usually a default, with "paste special" giving the 
user a choice). Copying an image from the web browser appears to place 
data on the clipboard in HTML and bitmap formats, where the HTML 
includes a link to the image as well as alt text etc.

It looks like Writer uses the HTML by default and attempts to download 
the image data itself, while Draw and Impress use the image data from 
the clipboard. Presumably Writer does something useful with the other 
HTML attributes which Draw and Impress don't, but looks like it needs to 
handle "data:" links more gracefully.

As you've found, a workaround is to use Paste Special > Bitmap (this 
tells writer to use the bitmap data from the clipboard rather than the 
HTML) - but that doesn't exactly help when you automatically hit default 
"Paste" and Writer hangs!

Mark.

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