Improving overflow handling in DOCX emitter

[wimjongman]

Discussed in #1261

^{Originally posted by hvbtup April 11, 2023}
Way back in 2013, some kind of support of the CSS overflow property was added to BIRT.

Unfortunately, the default in BIRT is hidden which is different from the CSS default visible.

This is causing me headache in the BIRT DOCX emitter, because the emitter respects this setting and thus long words get truncated.
A long word is a word that is too wide for the cell. This is not uncommon in German, e.g. "Bundestagspräsident".

Other users experienced the same issue.

See #1013 where I proposed a dirty workaround in the report.
I tried this workaround last week, but the designer would not accept the modified XML.
Anywy, even if it works, it is a really ugly workaround.

What makes things difficult here is that

• The CSS specs say that this property is not inherited (which makes sense).
• The overflow property cannot be specified in a style in BIRT.

I think the latter is an incorrect consequence of the first point; the original developer probably thought: If it cannot be inherited anyway, so why use it in a style?
But IMHO this is a misconception and it absolutely makes sense to specify the property in a style.
We don't have cascading style sheets in BIRT anyway. With "inheritance", BIRT means that e.g. a property of a cell can be inherited from the same property at table level. So "inheritable or not" is only related to the layout element tree structure in BIRT, but not to inherited CSS classes.

I propose to make the following changes to BIRT and I'm asking you for your opinion here:

1. Change the default value for overflow to be visible instead of hidden.
2. Allow setting this property in the style editor.

Not sure about:
3) Allow overriding the default value for overflow with a RenderOption for the emitter, similar to PDF_WORDBREAK for the PDF emitter.
4) Should we increase the version number of the RPTDesign XML file? I don't think this is needed. It's only a changed default value, and probably 99% of all BIRT reports don't care about this anyway.

Note: The PDF emitter needs emitter options to support this. I'm always using

options.setOption(IPDFRenderOption.PAGE_OVERFLOW, IPDFRenderOption.OUTPUT_TO_MULTIPLE_PAGES);
options.setOption(IPDFRenderOption.PDF_TEXT_WRAPPING, true);
options.setOption(IPDFRenderOption.PDF_WORDBREAK, true);

[reiner-killet]

I just installed BIRT 4.13 to check if there is an improvement concerning the possibility to change the default from "Hidden" to "Visible". Styles are still missing this attribute, no setting found in the configuration. So I still have to manipulate my templates in Visual Studio Code and add some styles. That's poor.

[merks]

Shouldn’t you try 4.14 to see these changes?

https://download.eclipse.org/birt/updates/nightly

[reiner-killet]

Are you sure that there is a fix contained in 4.14? Von: Ed Merks ***@***.***> Gesendet: Freitag, 8. September 2023 16:17 An: eclipse-birt/birt ***@***.***> Cc: Reiner Killet ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Betreff: Re: [eclipse-birt/birt] Improving overflow handling in DOCX emitter (Issue #1265) Shouldn’t you try 4.14 to see these changes? https://download.eclipse.org/birt/updates/nightly — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1265 (comment)> , or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AWYBUAQ5PPSLBRLNP2QPEEDXZMSGTANCNFSM6AAAAAAW6FW2QI> . You are receiving this because you commented. <https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AWYBUAVH2JXKPT5V7LS2YJLXZMSGTA5CNFSM6AAAAAAW6FW2QKWGG33NNVSW45C7OR4XAZNMJFZXG5LFINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTTGA4WNU.gif> Message ID: ***@***.*** ***@***.***> >

[hvbtup]

@reiner-killet Please try 4.14 as Ed advised instead of reacting with pointless questions.

[reiner-killet]

In 4.14 the behaviour can be selected at the style. The default for newly created reports is Overflow = Visible. Well done! How can I repair my 120 old templates? Each of them has hundreds of labels, datas, and texts with Overflow = Hidden (hard coded, not inherited). I opened some of them in Visual Studio Code and deleted all appearances of : <property name="overflow">hidden</property> using “Replace All”. This works and restores inheritance. Is there an easier way to achieve the same result? Von: Ed Merks ***@***.***> Gesendet: Freitag, 8. September 2023 16:17 An: eclipse-birt/birt ***@***.***> Cc: Reiner Killet ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Betreff: Re: [eclipse-birt/birt] Improving overflow handling in DOCX emitter (Issue #1265) Shouldn’t you try 4.14 to see these changes? https://download.eclipse.org/birt/updates/nightly — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1265 (comment)> , or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AWYBUAQ5PPSLBRLNP2QPEEDXZMSGTANCNFSM6AAAAAAW6FW2QI> . You are receiving this because you commented. <https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AWYBUAVH2JXKPT5V7LS2YJLXZMSGTA5CNFSM6AAAAAAW6FW2QKWGG33NNVSW45C7OR4XAZNMJFZXG5LFINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTTGA4WNU.gif> Message ID: ***@***.*** ***@***.***> >

[wimjongman]

Is there an easier way to achieve the same result?

Yes, probably.