[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 37361] LibreOffice 3.5 most annoying bugs

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37361

Roman Eisele <bugs at eikota.de> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Depends on|                            |47368

--- Comment #342 from Roman Eisele <bugs at eikota.de> 2012-07-11 13:58:33 PDT ---
I have resisted for a long time, but finally I have to nominate bug 47368 -
"Many crashes when accessibility enabled on Mac".

I have resisted for a long time, because this is not an easy candidate:
* the problem is limited to a single platform (MacOS X);
* it is not always reproducible out of the box;
* it is not clear where the problem comes from, i.e. if the bug is in our code
  or in Apple's code.

But nevertheless, it is definitely a "most annoying bug", and so I *have* to
nominate it:
* it affects quite more users than you may think (see the duplicates
  listed in bug 47368; and there are even more similar bug reports
  which are just not marked as duplicates of bug 47368!)
* it causes crashes about crashes for the users which suffer from it;
* these crashes appear in many different actions, giving our users
  the (wrong) impression that every piece of LibreOffice was unstable;
* therefore this bug has the potential to drive users crazy;
* and to make them leave LibreOffice once and for good.

You may object: "We have an easy workaround: just disable the MacOS
accessibility features, and LibreOffice is stable again"; this is true, but
IMHO it does not make this bug less annoying:
* It is very difficult for "normal" users to discover any connection between
  the crashes in LibreOffice and the MacOS accessibility features,
* therefore "normal" users will not discover the workaround easily;
* we, the QA volunteers, have to ask people again and again to check
  their accessibility settings, which shows that people even forget
  about these settings (and therefore will not use the workaround,
  even if we list it in the release notes and read_me files);
* for many people which are physically disabled/handicapped in one or
  the other way the accessibility features are vitally necessary,
  so they just CAN NOT disable them
* and have to leave LibreOffice instead;
* therefore this workaround is NOT a workaround for them.

In addition, it gives me a rather bad feeling about LibreOffice that we
unwillingly discriminate people (physically disabled/handicapped people) which
are already discriminated by our way of live in many ways. This is a bad thing
to do for free and open software -- it should be free and open also in the
meaning of being easily accessible and usable for as many people as possible.

Therefore, we need to track down this issue some day. Even if we can't fix it
because the problem is in Apple's code (I don't believe this, because many
other applications seem to work fine with accessibility features enabled,
including other office applications!), we need to find out about this, either
in order to fix it (together with Apple) or at least to explain to our users
that the crashes are not our fault.

Sorry for this rant -- no offence! -- I just wanted to state clearly why this
bug, even being limited to a single platform and not easy to track down, is
nevertheless an important (!) candidate for our "most annoying bugs" list. So
please don't remove it from this list, but let's think together about what we
can to do to solve this issue.

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