Difference between revisions of "LibreOffice"

Revision as of 20:36, 30 December 2012

LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers. You, too, can also get involved!

LibreOffice in Arch Linux

Official support for OpenOffice.org was dropped in favor of LibreOffice. See Dropping Oracle OpenOffice (arch-general).

LibreOffice is the "Document Foundation fork" in the extra repository, which includes enhancements and features.

Installation

Stable version

Ensure that the fonts ttf-dejavu and artwiz-fonts are installed before continuing, otherwise LibreOffice will display rectangles instead of text.

Download and install the base for stable and/or beta and/or devel:

# pacman -S libreoffice

Since version 3.4.2rc1, LibreOffice has been split. The install will give you a menu prompting for which components to install. As the language pack for en-US is no longer included by default, you will need to install at least 1 language pack. The default language is Afrikaans (because it is alphabetically the first provider of libreoffice-langpack), the previous default (en-US) is at number 24:

[user@home ~]# pacman -S libreoffice
:: There are 12 members in group libreoffice:
:: Repository extra
   1) libreoffice-base  2) libreoffice-calc  3) libreoffice-common
   4) libreoffice-draw  5) libreoffice-gnome  6) libreoffice-impress
   7) libreoffice-kde4  8) libreoffice-math
   9) libreoffice-postgresql-connector  10) libreoffice-sdk
   11) libreoffice-sdk-doc  12) libreoffice-writer

Enter a selection (default=all): 
resolving dependencies...
:: There are 108 providers available for libreoffice-langpack:
:: Repository extra
   1) libreoffice-af  2) libreoffice-am  3) libreoffice-ar  4) libreoffice-as
   5) libreoffice-ast  6) libreoffice-be  7) libreoffice-bg  8) libreoffice-bn
   9) libreoffice-bn-IN  10) libreoffice-bo  11) libreoffice-br
   12) libreoffice-brx  13) libreoffice-bs  14) libreoffice-ca
   15) libreoffice-ca-XV  16) libreoffice-cs  17) libreoffice-cy
   18) libreoffice-da  19) libreoffice-de  20) libreoffice-dgo
   21) libreoffice-dz  22) libreoffice-el  23) libreoffice-en-GB
   24) libreoffice-en-US  25) libreoffice-en-ZA  26) libreoffice-eo
   27) libreoffice-es  28) libreoffice-et  29) libreoffice-eu
   30) libreoffice-fa  31) libreoffice-fi  32) libreoffice-fr
   33) libreoffice-ga  34) libreoffice-gd  35) libreoffice-gl
   36) libreoffice-gu  37) libreoffice-he  38) libreoffice-hi
   39) libreoffice-hr  40) libreoffice-hu  41) libreoffice-id
   42) libreoffice-is  43) libreoffice-it  44) libreoffice-ja
   45) libreoffice-ka  46) libreoffice-kk  47) libreoffice-km
   48) libreoffice-kn  49) libreoffice-ko  50) libreoffice-kok
   51) libreoffice-ks  52) libreoffice-ku  53) libreoffice-lb
   54) libreoffice-lo  55) libreoffice-lt  56) libreoffice-lv
   57) libreoffice-mai  58) libreoffice-mk  59) libreoffice-ml
   60) libreoffice-mn  61) libreoffice-mni  62) libreoffice-mr
   63) libreoffice-my  64) libreoffice-nb  65) libreoffice-ne
   66) libreoffice-nl  67) libreoffice-nn  68) libreoffice-nso
   69) libreoffice-oc  70) libreoffice-om  71) libreoffice-or
   72) libreoffice-pa-IN  73) libreoffice-pl  74) libreoffice-pt
   75) libreoffice-pt-BR  76) libreoffice-ro  77) libreoffice-ru
   78) libreoffice-rw  79) libreoffice-sa-IN  80) libreoffice-sat
   81) libreoffice-sd  82) libreoffice-sh  83) libreoffice-si
   84) libreoffice-sk  85) libreoffice-sl  86) libreoffice-sq
   87) libreoffice-sr  88) libreoffice-ss  89) libreoffice-st
   90) libreoffice-sv  91) libreoffice-sw-TZ  92) libreoffice-ta
   93) libreoffice-te  94) libreoffice-tg  95) libreoffice-th
   96) libreoffice-tn  97) libreoffice-tr  98) libreoffice-ts
   99) libreoffice-tt  100) libreoffice-ug  101) libreoffice-uk
   102) libreoffice-uz  103) libreoffice-ve  104) libreoffice-vi
   105) libreoffice-xh  106) libreoffice-zh-CN  107) libreoffice-zh-TW
   108) libreoffice-zu

Enter a number (default=1):

Note: A common mistake is to install libreoffice-uk, which is the Ukrainian language pack, instead of libreoffice-en-GB.

Alternatively, you can install it this way:

# pacman -S libreoffice-{en-US,common,base,calc,draw,impress,math,writer,gnome,kde4,sdk,sdk-doc}

Note: Both ways work and you need libreoffice-kde4 or libreoffice-gnome only if you care about qt or gtk visual integration - see Theme section below.

Check the recommended optional dependencies pacman suggests. E.g. install a Java Runtime Environment (optional, highly recommended). See: Java. You will need hsqldb-java to use Libreoffice Base.

Development version

You will need the PKGBUILD.XX which is in the ABS with the stable version of libreoffice-common

Actually (2012-12) the development version is the 4.0 so the PKGBUILD is called PKGBUILD.40

See Getting PKGBUILD files with abs.

Alternatively you can get it with yaourt:

$ yaourt -G libreoffice-common

Or in this page download PKGBUILD.XX:

https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk?h=packages/libreoffice

Once you have the PKGBUILD.XX rename it in PKGBUILD.

Then run makepkg to build libreoffice in the folder of the PKGBUILD:

$ makepkg -S

This can take several hours depending on your system. Once it's over and successful you will have *.pkg.tar.xz files which you can install (example for 4.0beta2) with:

# pacman -U libreoffice-common-4.0.0-0.beta2.1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libreoffice-writer-4.0.0-0.beta2.1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

This will install libreoffice writer and if you'r using gnome install libreoffice-writer-4.0.0-0.beta2.1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Theme

For Qt integration, install the package libreoffice-kde4.

For GTK integration, install the package libreoffice-gnome.

Even if you are not running one of these desktop environments and thus do not need to "integrate" with them, you may still wish to install these packages so that libreoffice will use non-default gtk or qt themes. For example, libreoffice on e17 uses the default "ugly" (aka "win95") theme; installing libreoffice-gnome will allow you to select a more pleasant gtk theme.

Extension management

Arch is shipping some additional extensions. We currently ship these extensions: pdfimport presentation-minimizer presenter-screen report-builder wiki-publisher ct2n hunart numbertext oooblogger typo watch-window diagram.

If you find any of them useful install it

# pacman -S libreoffice-extension-nlpsolver libreoffice-extension-foo ...

Check the built-in LibreOffice Extension manager or Get extensions Online if you want to install more extensions.

Language Aids

Spell checking

For spell checking, you will need hunspell and a language dictionary for hunspell (like hunspell-en for English, hunspell-de for German, etc).

Hyphenation rules

For hyphenation rules, you will need hyphen and a language hyphen rule set (hyphen-en for English, hyphen-de for German, etc).

Thesaurus

For the thesaurus option, you will need libmythes and a mythes language thesaurus (like mythes-en for English, mythes-de for German, etc)).

Grammar checking

For grammar checking, you will need to install an extension such as LanguageTool, which can be found in the AUR: libreoffice-extension-languagetool^AUR or the LanguageTool Website.

Other grammar tools can also be found on the LibreOffice Extension Page or OpenOffice's Website. Not all OpenOffice extensions are guaranteed to work with LibreOffice.

Note: Languagetool uses java and may slow down or briefly hang LibreOffice, particularly while opening a documents. Fortunately this is usually only when initially opening a document and is usually not apparent otherwise. Openjdk6 seems to get the better results than openjdk7 with LanguageTool, although this is unconfirmed.

Installing Macros

In most Linux distros, the default path for macros is:

~/.openoffice.org/3/user/Scripts/

The path for this directory for LibreOffice in Arch Linux is:

~/.config/.libreoffice/3/user/Scripts/

Another thing to note is that if you intend to use macros, you must have a JRE enabled, use of a JRE is default behaviour; but disabling its use is listed in the speed tweaks below.

Running LibreOffice

If you want to run a specific module of LibreOffice (instead of the LibreOffice default Startcenter (/usr/bin/soffice is still included for fallback reasons)), use the following script front-ends:

Writer (Word processor): /usr/bin/libreoffice --writer or /usr/bin/soffice --writer

Calc (Spreadsheet editor): /usr/bin/libreoffice --calc

Impress (Presentation editor): /usr/bin/libreoffice --impress

Draw (Vector graphics editor): /usr/bin/libreoffice --draw

Math (Formula Editor): /usr/bin/libreoffice --math

Base (Database front-end): /usr/bin/libreoffice --base

As of LibreOffice version 3.5.x it tries to magically autodetect your desktop UI using the following magic if proper libs will be found:

 gtk3 -> gtk2 -> kde4 -> generic

To force the use of a certain VCL UI interface use one of this:

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen lowriter
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kde4 lowriter 
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk lowriter 
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3 lowriter

The new gtk3 UI is still marked upstream as experimental and will only be available if you enable "experimental features" in LibO main configuration dialog.

Speed up LibreOffice

Some settings may improve LibreOffice's loading time and responsiveness. However, some also increase RAM usage, so use them carefully. They can all be accessed under Tools > Options.

Under Memory:
- Reduce the number of Undo steps to a figure lower than 100, to something like 20 or 30 steps.
- Under Graphics cache, set Use for LibreOffice to 128 MB (up from the original 20MB).
- Set Memory per object to 20MB (up from the default 5MB).
- If you use LibreOffice often, check LibreOffice Quickstarter.
Under Java, uncheck Use a Java runtime environment.

Note: For a list of functionality which depends on OpenOffice Java support, see this page: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java - Still needed?

Troubleshooting

Font substitution

These settings can be changed in the LibreOffice options. From the drop-down menu, select Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Fonts. Check the box that says Apply Replacement Table. Type Andale Sans UI in the font box and choose your desired font for the Replace with option. When done, click the checkmark. Then choose the Always and Screen only options in the box below. Click OK. You will then need to go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View, and uncheck "Use system font for user interface". If you use a non-antialised font, such as Arial, you will also need to uncheck "Screen font antialiasing" before menu fonts render correctly.

Anti-aliasing

Execute

$ echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" | xrdb -merge

To make the change persistent, add Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault to your ~/.Xresources file, and make sure to run xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources. [1]. See X resources for more details.

If this does not work, you can also try adding Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault to your ~/.Xdefaults. If you do not have this file, you will have to create it.

LibreOffice looks ugly

If you do not have the same look and feel as you were used to in OpenOffice, it is likely that you did not install the required packages to make it look nice. See the Theme section.

Hanging when using NFS shares

If OpenOffice hangs when trying to open or save a document located on a NFS share, try prepending the following lines with a # in /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice (or /usr/bin/soffice if using go-openoffice):

# file locking now enabled by default
SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1
export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING

Original post here

Note: Only NFSv3 is affected. NFSv4 works well with OpenOffice.

Fixing Java Framework Error

You may get the following error when you try to run OpenOffice.

[Java framework] Error in function createSettingsDocument (elements.cxx).
javaldx failed!

If so, give yourself ownership of ~/.config/ like so:

sudo chown -vR username:users ~/.config

Post on Arch Linux Forums

LibreOffice does not detect my certificates

If you cannot see the certificates when trying to sign a document, you will need to have the certificates configured in Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird). If after that LibreOffice still does not show them, set the MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER environment variable to point to your Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird) folder.

export MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER=$HOME/.mozilla/firefox/XXXXXX.default/

Certificate Detection

Run .pps files in edit mode (without slideshow)

The only solution is to rename .pps file in .ppt

Add the following script to your home directory and use it to open every .pps file. Very useful to open .pps files received by email without the need to save them.

#!/bin/bash

f=`mktemp`

cp "$1" "${f}.ppt" && libreoffice "${f}.ppt" && rm -f "${f}.ppt"

Bibliography problems

If writer falls while you try open bibliography database with this error:

com::sun::star::loader::CannotActivateFactoryException

Install libreoffice-base, it's contains needed component.