LibreOffice in Slackware.
 

How about a thread to discuss using LibreOffice in Slackware?
Problems?
Successes?
Tips?

LibreOffice-6.2 was released this morning, Thursday, 7 February 2019.
It will be the last series to also be offered in 32-bit.

The annoucement, https://blog.documentfoundation.org/...breoffice-6-2/

The Release Notes, https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/6.2

AlienBob's LibreOffice packages, http://slackware.uk/people/alien/sla...eoffice/pkg64/

A recent thread that reached a successful conclusion,
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...hi-4175647308/

Well, that sucks. I use LO on my netbook, even though it still runs 5.4.

Just to clarify though:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/...otes/6.2#Linux

Presumably this means that Eric could still make 32 bit binaries beyond 6.2 if he wanted?

EDIT: either way, it's not a major issue, I imagine. The version of Abiword I use is 2.8 from 2010.

As build versions, x86 compatibility will still be maintained in the sources:
(from the 6.2 Realease Notes).
So it will still be possible to build 32-bits packages for Slackware (etc.).

Which means that you will still be able to find 32bit LibreOffice packages in my repository.

Both Alienbob's package and self compiled from website works well.

I run current so some time a while ago Alienbob's package wouldnt work cause of some library version mismatch or such (prolly installed packages in system vs current alien repo versions mismatch) and so I built it from their .tar.gz in /opt or something. TBH cant remember if it was libreoffice or openoffice (shame on me?).

But atm I have Alienbob's package and it has been working great.

I have seen some glitches in an Excel spreadsheet template but I think that it was because the spreadsheet template was old and not properly redone (an old logo that wasnt there on windows/office was there, but if you saved the document, close and then reopened the document it wasnt there). But this is for .docx format ._.''

Problems:
PDF support - meaning advanced editing and even rendering PDFs has always been bumpy for me.
It's not the fastest software out there.
Can be buggy, especially if you get into some less used features. I've had trouble with plugins for example.
There are some layout oddities when sharing docs with others.
No fault of Libre, but most people use Microsoft, and if they have the slightest issue with a Libre open source file, they lose their minds.

Successes:
Until I started using Alien Bob's builds, I found building the wretched thing to be tedious. Now I upgrade with two files, main install + one dictionary. Many thanks for that.
Works better than MS in some ways, and maintains a tidy, coherent design.

Tips:
I use it for local editing, then upload to Google Docs for sharing with colleagues.

I have been using LibreOffice for years now in a windows environment. (Anything else than LibreOffice did not really work for me in the beginning, and I have not been checking recent improvements in for example Abiword/Calligra etc.).

For example we use MSexcel spreadsheets with shared info. Mostly no problems but I have to make sure NOT to copy/paste sections with merged cells or any formatting (i.e. transfer the stuff over via Shift-paste into the shared MSexcel-document) to prevent any weird error messages when a windows-user opens the file next time around.

Also I routinely edit Word documents coming from Windows or Mac users and that works fine (especially via Track Changes) albeit for some font-issues (I think inserting the 'special character' in LibreOffice works fine, but when the other end has used 'Symbol' for this purpose, this gets lost in translation). Fonts are one of the problem-sources in editing shared files...

When texts contain references made with something as EndNote this should have been turned into flat text before working on it in LibreOffice otherwise any editing ruins the bibliography. Like also mentioned here. I normally save a new copy with only my changes and keep the original intact; then they can always merge via comparing the files side by side.

But in general very happy with LibreOffice (vs MS Office), Inkscape (vs AI) and The Gimp (vs Photoshop)

I download the rpm binary package and use rpm2tgz to convert it to a slackware package. Works well.

Many thanks for your LibreOffice package, Eric. :)

Writer and Calc work fine, but I never was that impressed with Impress. I currently run PowerPoint with Wine because I need to collaborate on slides with others, and I just don't think it would go that smoothly. On the other hand, the formatting for these slides is very simple, so maybe I should do some more experimenting.

I use MS Office 2010 in WINE daily. I used to be a HUGE supporter of OpenOffice/Libreoffice but I have always found it to be very clunky. It's kind of crazy that Office under WINE generally runs oodles faster than a supposedly NATIVE Linux app.

Anyway, I always keep a Libreoffice install on hand, because many of my precedents are in opendocument format, but I find myself using it less and less. AlienBob's packages have always worked best for me so I highly recommend them.

ok... there's also WPS Office for those who are looking for an alternative:
http://wps-community.org/
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...ce/wps-office/

OpenOffice has been my everyday Office suite for over 15 years on Windows and over 10 years on Linux. I tried LibreOffice when it was forked off OO but never found any advantages. When upgrading OOo I simply download the rpm binaries and convert them with rpm2tgz.

All of us who regularly share documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, or move them between Linux and Windows, know that seamless transfer between OSs or office suits simply does not exist. The major culprit is Microsoft's xml format. A plain document seldom causes problems, but even a minimum of formatting - indents, headers, footnotes - might give trouble.

Sticking to the old .doc, .xml, and .ppt formats is one solution but doesn't help when someone sends you a .docx file to work with.

Softmaker handles MS xml files pretty well, but its GUI and menus differ a lot from other office suits so there's a learning curve. There are a few small snags in its Linux version, and I've had issues with pptx files created in Softmaker Linux when opening them in MSOffice.

I sometimes use WPS Office for converting .doc <> .docx and .ppt <> .pptx. A small snag is that WPS Office replaces Times New Roman with Liberation by default. This can be solved by removing the symlink /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-liberation-conf

I've been using it since it was known as StarOffice! Currently I use AlienBob's packages for Slackware, and all I can say is that it is far superior to Micro$ofts much more expensive offerings. It is also genuinely cross-platform, being available for Mac and Windows as well. Its a really class piece of software!

--
Pete

Yesterday's announcement concerning the release of LibreOffice-6.2, overshadowed the news about 6.1.5.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/6.1