Whew! I did a whole new 32-bit 15.0 Slackware installation, then installed the previously compiled openshot and dependency packages, and openshot worked fine. Upgraded with all patches via slackpkg, including kernel, openshot still working OK. Eventually the openshot error appeared after installing Libreoffice. Remove Libreoffice and openshot working again. Never even ran Libreoffice after its installation. This was "LibreOffice-7.3.1.3-i586-1_SBo.tgz," created by me on March 15 from SBo sources and working fine since then, although all I use it for is creating and printing documents. I notice that slackbuilds now has version "LibreOffice-7.3.3.2-i586-1_SBo.tgz" so I compiled and tried it with the same results. Then I tried alienbob's "libreoffice-7.3.3-i586-1alien.txz" from <http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/pkg/15.0/> and that one works and does not affect openshot. The cause of the problem is not obvious to me, but I note that alienbob's version is built without java support.

When I hear of mysterious problems with AppImages, the only one who has ever run them down for me is the AppImage builder. Libraries searched for but not found in the AppImage will be searched for in the system. It seems the system is finding some libreoffice library before the one it was otherwise finding.

One option is to put libreoffice somewhere bizzarre, e.g. /opt/lib64, and tack that location on to the end of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. That might get you out of it.

Good to hear the problem is more or less solved.

One more thing I'd be interested in (if you have the time) is how much java is implicated. Could you try removing any Libreoffice but then install java (zulu-openjdk11 - the one that would be installed for SBo's LibreOffice) and check openshot again?

chris

Don't worry about that extra testing - I think I've found the problem.

It is in the SBo LibreOffice which changes python's sys.path to accommodate "pyuno", a python interface to the LibreOffice API. I guess it is seldom used so won't be missed if you revert it. Do that by editing the file /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pyuno.pth and comment out the line you find there by inserting a # at the beginning of the line. That will allow openshot-qt to now work as expected.

chris

Yes, commenting out the line in "pyuno.pth" fixed my problem. Thank you.

Otherwise wouldn't that file "pyuno.pth" always hijack Python for LibreOffice and cause other python programs to similarly fail?

That mechanism (using a .pth file like that) is the accepted way to extend the python path - it's a design feature of Python itself. This problem with Openshot is the first time there has been an issue reported since LibreOffice was added to SBo in 2016 (and I had my own build for a while before that, back to when I used OpenOffice, without any problem).

My guess is that the /usr/bin/openshot startup script is the real culprit. Looking at it for 5 minutes, I have no clue what it does. Bypassing it seems to allow openshot to work even when pyuno.pth is still in place. Unfortunately I don't really have time at the moment to investigate the openshot startup script. Until then I'll remove pyuno.pth at the next LibreOffice update.

chris