help needed (embedded writed docs): fdo#44081 fix circular dependency sw / sfx

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

Hi,

I'd like to have some help on fdo#44081
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/44081

The bug is that for Base forms (which are embedded Writer documents),
setting the property "open read-only" is sticky (can never be unset
through the UI). The "edit" entry in the writer read-only pop-up menu
is disabled.

The situation is that this "edit" entry should indeed be disabled when
the form is opened in normal mode (because then the writer document is
*not* supposed to be changed by the user, only the contents of the
form controls). But enabling this menu entry when it is opened in
design mode ("edit" in the base UI instead of "open") would solve
fdo#44081 nicely.

So I worked on that, and wrote https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/11152
Which I'm deeply unhappy about:

1) It makes sfx2 use private headers from sw, in a way that does not
   seem immediately trivial to fix; I mean these headers use other
   private headers, so we'd have to move more headers to public
   (include/sw). Doable, but maybe overkill.

2) Worse, it includes a circular dependency between libswlo and
   libsfxlo. IMHO, we cannot have that.

I'd very much appreciate some help / guidance on how to avoid these
issues, because I don't see a way out; the code in sfx needs to know
whether the form is in design mode or not, and for that, it needs to
call member functions of sw types defined in private headers, and
libsfxlo needs the typeinfo (so to be linked against) libswlo... And I
don't expect that we can remove the dependency of libswlo upon
libsfxlo :)


Alternatively, a possibly less ideal fix, (thinking aloud here) maybe
we could instruct writer to ignore the "open read-only" property on
Base forms? Would someone have code pointers for that?

If we go this route, we should *disable* that checkbox in the UI (menu
File / Properties, tab "Security"), rather than let the user set a
checkbox that will be ignored. Code pointers to do that also
appreciated.


Does *anything* *else* than Base use embedded writer documents? Just
to make sure that by changing stuff for "all embedded writer
documents" (which is the level at which decisions are taken now: all
embedded documents have the "edit" entry in read-only pop-up meny
disabled), we will not break another use case.

-- 
Lionel