My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

LibreOffice 7.4.1 for Slackware 15.0 and -current

LibreOffice Community Edition 7.4.1 was released today and I already have the packages in my repository for Slackware 15.0 and -current. The Document Foundation blog post has all the details, let me do a verbatim copy of the most striking features in the 7.4 releases:

GENERAL

  • Support for WebP images and EMZ/WMZ files
  • Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library
  • Search field for the Extension Manager
  • Performance and compatibility improvements

WRITER

  • Better change tracking in the footnote area
  • Edited lists show original numbers in change tracking
  • New typographic settings for hyphenation

CALC

  • Support for 16,384 columns in spreadsheets
  • Extra functions in drop-down AutoSum widget
  • New menu item to search for sheet names

IMPRESS

  • New support for document themes

Note that I compile these packages on Slackware 15.0. If you install them on Slackware -current you will also need to download ‘icu4c-compat‘ and boost-compat from my repository and install them. They are two compatibility packages containing older versions of the icu4c and boost libraries, in particular the versions that are part of Slackware 15.0 but no longer part of -current.

Get libreoffice packages from my own Europe-based server: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ or my US-based server: https://us.slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ ;or any mirror if you wait a day, for instance https://slackware.uk/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ .
These servers all offer rsync access if you prefer that to http.

Enjoy – Eric

31 Comments

  1. Konrad J Hambrick

    Thanks Eric !
    Is it just me and my KDE on Slackware64 15.0 or does libreoffice 7.4.1 startup minimized ?
    The only way I can access the App after startup is right-click the Icon on my Panel [Other Actions]->[Maximize]
    — kjh

  2. alienbob

    For me, both on Slackware 15.0 (XFCE) as well as on -current (KDE) the LibreOffice window opens just like always.

    • Konrad J Hambrick

      Thanks alienbob.
      I was afraid that was the case 🙁
      I’ll dig around in my KDE Configs and try to find the culprit.
      I know I’ve seen a Config like ‘open minimized’ somewhere …
      Thanks again for all that you do.
      — kjh
      p.s. once I do the ‘unminimize’ routine, LibreOffice 7.4.1 runs great !

      • Konrad J Hambrick

        Found it.
        I had an ancient shell script wrapper which was doing: exec /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/scalc –calc “$@”
        Removed the –calc arg and the wrapper-script works as expected now.
        To Test … scalc starts up minimized when I run: /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/scalc –calc foo.xlsx # where foo.xlsx is an existing Excel File
        Mystery solved( I was getting away with an error before ).
        Thanks again Eric !
        — kjh

        • Richard Herbert

          Hey Konrad and Eric.

          I recently installed LibreOffice for the first time, so version 7.4.1 is my first experience with it (the usual GREAT job, Eric). I had the same problem Konrad mentioned in his original comment, ie, LibreOffice apps were opening minimized, with only a 16 x 66 pixel window in the upper left corner of my KDE desktop. I decided to go looking through the blurbs and comments for previous iterations of LibreOffice in this blog and, walla! I found Eric’s advice to try uncommenting entries in /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh, and succeeded with setting “SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3_kde5”. Everybody’s mileage may vary, of course, but it worked for me.

          • alienbob

            Thanks Richard for bringing that GUI configuration hint out of the dust and into the open again. It will certainly benefit some other visitor of the blog.

          • Konrad J Hambrick

            Richard —
            Heads Up !
            I mentioned your comment over in LQ.
            Users running LibreOffice built via the SBo LibreOffice.SlackBuild are experiencing tiny opening Windows too and referred them here.
            — kjh

            • Richard Herbert

              And I thought it was only we two. 😉 Hopefully others will profit.

              Thanks!


              Richard

          • Konrad J Hambrick

            All —
            This issue has been discussed fairly frequently all around the net as well as on LQ and it seems to be ‘for real’
            There is a patch for LO 7.4.1.2 that reverts a fairly-recent set of changes that caused the Window Size Bug.
            LQ User marav attached the patch here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/libreoffice-in-slackware-4175647812/page24.html#post6386191
            I’ve not checked for myself but LQ user chris.willing reported that these patches have already been applied to 7.4.2.3 ( I trust him — he maintains the LibreOffice SBo 🙂 )
            Anyhow, the issue appears to be OBE because LO 7.4.2.3 includes the patches.
            Just sayin 🙂
            — kjh

          • alienbob

            I uploaded LibreOffice 7.4.2 packages earlier today, I hope they work for you,

          • Konrad J Hambrick

            I was trying to save my applause until you announced LO 7.4.2.3 but …
            I installed LO 7.4.2.3 on Slackware65 15.0 + Multilib this morning when I saw that is was mentioned in your ChangeLog.
            The ‘Start Minimized’ bug has been fixed for me.
            Thank you for all you do Eric !
            — kjh

            • Richard Herbert

              Greetings Konrad and Eric. Same results here. I let slackpkg overwrite /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh after downloading and upgrading to libreoffice-7.4.2-x86_64-1alien. After rebooting (big Slackware update today), Libroffice Calc was the first program I opened. It opens maximized as desired, and “kf5 (cairo+xcb)” is the default UI renderer. I’m going to try setting other UI renderers to see if I notice any improvements or changes, but apart from that, all is good here.

              Best regards to you both.

          • alienbob

            Good to hear that the 7.4.2 upgrade fixed your Window issue.

  3. gegechris99

    Thank you Eric,
    Just upgraded in Slackware64 15.0 from LO 7.3 series and performance improved when opening up.

  4. Jen

    Thanks!

  5. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! Here it runs OK.

  6. Francisco

    Hi Eric.
    Updated. Many thanks for your time and effort to keep LO in slackware.
    Regards

  7. foldy

    When I build 7.4.1 from sources, or use allien version or rebuild from rpm, I always get :
    libreoffice –writer %U
    Unspecified Application Error
    nothing in logs, do somebody know if libreoffice has any log of theese errors ?
    Thx

  8. Marco

    Hee Eric,
    I know this is your blog and all, so I probably have no right to say this, but could we please try to be a little bit nicer? I know it’s frustrating when you spend so much time for the community, and then people can’t or aren’t willing to put some effort in searching for a solution before asking, but still.

    Regards, Marco

    • alienbob

      In general I am a nice person and I will help you solve your trivial or complex problems if they are related to my stuff that you are using – this blog is full of examples of that.
      But it’s my blog indeed. I spend a lot of time on my stuff and I get *really* irritated by people who expect me to do their google search.
      I quit visiting LinuxQuestions.org and helping people there exactly for reasons like this.

      • Marco

        I understand, but the way you react is like trying to bring the person down and that is going to far, I think.

  9. userx-bw

    Hey Hello,’
    how should I fix this? create a soft link ro the lesser so filename ??

    $ libreoffice –writer
    javaldx: Could not find a Java Runtime Environment!
    Warning: failed to read path from javaldx
    /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libicui18n.so.69: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    userx@slackdog.pen:~/Downloads/linbraoffice15
    $ ls /usr/lib64/libicui18n.so*
    /usr/lib64/libicui18n.so /usr/lib64/libicui18n.so.71.1
    /usr/lib64/libicui18n.so.71

  10. userx-bw

    never mine you can go back to whatever you were doing before I chimed in.

  11. Berenger

    Hi Eric,
    I installed libre-office but draw doesn’t work. And i saw you don’t speak about draw in your description of libre-office above.
    So is that normal ?
    Thanks so much for your great work,
    Best regards,
    Bérenger

    • alienbob

      Apparently there were no “striking features” in the 7.4 release of Draw.
      The application works for me by the way, I can’t advise anything helpful about a simple statement “draw doesn’t work”.

    • Marco

      Do you get any error messages when you execute “libreoffice –draw” in a terminal? (except for “javaldx: Could not find a Java Runtime Environment!
      Warning: failed to read path from javaldx” with should not prevent Draw from running).

  12. Bérenger

    No i apologize, it wasn’t really java. Actually i downloaded libre-office from slackbuilds.org and i thought it was the same packets as Eric’s one.
    Newbie’s error, sorry. But it works now with the Eric’s package.
    Thanks a lot 🙂

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