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Tag: openoffice (Page 1 of 2)

Libre Office 7 packages for Slackware-current

August 11, 2020 / / 26 Comments

New! LibreOffice 7.0.0 was released last week and I built packages for Slackware-current.

The release announcement gives a concise overview of the new features and enhancements all over the board – among which a much improved support for Microsoft Office document file formats. I will not repeat all of that here on the blog, so please check out the content behind above link.
Amazing that even with several big companies driving the development of this Open Source office suite, still 26% of LibreOffice’s code contributions come from non-corporate individuals.

LibreOffice and KDE Plasma5

The libreoffice.SlackBuild script is now defaulting to building KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support. It will generate errors if you try to compile on a system that does not have KDE Frameworks5 and libdbus-qt5 installed. See the README.kde5 in the source: you can get all of them from my ‘ktown‘ repository.
Or, if you do not want to install KDE5 components, you set the value of the “ADD_KDE5” variable in the script to “NO”.
Note that you can safely install the KDE support package on a system that does not have any trace of KDE; it will simply do nothing.

Java support dropped from the libreoffice Slackware package

One caveat with the new packages is that to build Java support into them, one will need Oracle JDK 9 or higher. I do not have OpenJDK 9 or higher in my repositories and I will not, until IcedTea adds support for these versions. Until then, I stick with Java 8 and that means I had to disable Java support in the libreoffice packages that I compile from source. There’s a new variable in the libreoffice.SlackBuild script, “USE_JAVA“, and it defaults to “NO”. If you want to recompile the packages adding Java support, get a recent enough JDK from Oracle and be sure to also install Apache Ant.

From ??the LibreOffice Wiki page:

What is Java used for in LibreOffice?
LibreOffice is written primarily in C / C++, a language that generates programs called “native” designed for specific platforms. There are versions for Windows, Linux or Solaris, but not for all three at the same time. However, some modules can be written in other languages, including Java.
Specifically, currently (as of version 6.3) at least these components/functionality require Java:

  • HSQLDB (optionally used for embedded database in Base; default is Firebird that doesn’t depend on Java)
  • JDBC
  • Some wizards (particularly, Table/Query/Form/Report Wizards in Base)
  • ReportBuilder (used to generate actual reports from report templates in Base)
  • Non-Linear solvers built-in extension (DEPS and SCO) in Calc (there is an experimental Swarm solver that doesn’t depend on Java)
  • MediaWiki extension (Wiki Publisher)
  • Support for scripts and extensions written in Java/Beans

I hope none of you are in dire need of this functionality, in that case I would suggest installing the official binaries from the Document Foundation and a Oracle JDK (or JRE) version 9 or higher.

Also, this is a .0.0 release – do you feel that you can use this release as your daily driver? Should I make the previous 6.4.5 available somehow (not that I would like that)? Note that these packages are available only for Slackware-current anyway, and that is a testing ground already.

Eric

Libre Office 6.4.4 packages available for slackware-current

May 22, 2020 / / 16 Comments

The Document Foundation released the latest version of LibreOffice (6.4.4) yesterday, and I compiled a set of packages for Slackware -current. Unfortunately Slackware 14.2 is stuck at LibreOffice 6.2.x because newer source releases can not compile against the old libraries of our stable platform anymore).
Get the packages – as usual – from my own server or one of its mirrors; https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/) or https://slackware.uk/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/)

I will repeat my message from earlier posts about using my LibreOffice on Slackware: among the packages for LibreOffice that are targeting Slackware-current, you will find a “libreoffice-kde-integration” package which adds Qt5 and KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support to the LibreOffice suite.
If you run Slackware-current but do not have KDE5 packages installed at all, don’t worry. LibreOffice will work great – the KDE integration package just will not add anything useful for you. On the other hand, if you have Plasma5 installed you will benefit from native file selection dialog windows and other integration features. And even if you do not have Plasma5 but you do have Qt5 installed, then you will be able to run LibreOffice with Qt5 User Interface elements instead of defaulting to GTK3.
Note that the libreoffice package installs a profile script for bash and csh compatible shells into /etc/profile.d/ which you can edit to force a particular widget set for the LibreOffice User Interface if you are not happy with the default choice LibreOffice makes.

If you want to compile LibreOffice 6.4.4 packages yourself using my SlackBuild script, then be aware that by default the KDE5 support is disabled. This will of course change when KDE Plasma5 becomes part of Slackware. You will have to set the value of the script parameter “ADD_KDE5” to “YES” for now. Additionally you will have to install the packages that this functionality depends on otherwise the compilation will fail.
Read the ‘README.kde5‘ file in the source directory for the list of packages you’ll need. All of the required packages can be  found in my ‘ktown’ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/

Enjoy! Eric

LibreOffice 6.1.2 packages available

October 6, 2018 / / 25 Comments

The Document Foundation announced version 6.1.2 of their office suite last week. Today, new LibreOffice packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current are done compiling and available in my repository.

Get the packages from my repository or any mirror, like:

I also updated the VeraCrypt package to version 1.23, and you’ll find one for Slackware 14.2 as well as -current. Next on the list to update are: handbrake, ffmpeg, mkvtoolnix and probably others that I have neglected. All of these will become available shortly for 14.2 and -current. Fans of Plasma5 will have to wait a bit… Plasma 5.14 is just around the corner but I may wait until 5.14.1.

Have a good weekend, Eric

LibreOffice 5.1.0 for slackware-current

February 13, 2016 / / 20 Comments

libreoffce_logoLibreoffice 5.1.0 was announced last week on the Document Foundation blog.

The Document Foundation statement about this release: “LibreOffice 5.1 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For enterprise class deployments, TDF maintains the more mature 5.0.x branch (soon at 5.0.5)“.

Which is why I make this new 5.1.0 release available only on Slackware’s own bleeding edge: slackware-current.

lo5103_about

Some of the highlights of LibreOffice 5.1 as taken from the release notes:

  • User Interface: LibreOffice 5.1’s user interface has been completely reorganized, to provide faster and more convenient access to its most used features. A new menu has been added to each of the applications: Style (Writer), Sheet (Calc) and Slide (Impress and Draw). In addition, several icons and menu commands have been repositioned based on user preferences.
  • Interoperability: Compatibility with proprietary document formats has been improved, as a part of the ongoing effort for a better interoperability with other productivity software. In addition, filters have been added for Apple Keynote 6, Microsoft Write and Gnumeric files.
  • Spreadsheet Functions: Calc’s formula engine has been improved with features addressing restrictions in table structured references and sticky column/row anchors, interoperability with OOXML spreadsheets and compatibility with ODF 1.2.

Packages can be obtained from these mirror sites and probably others too (if you have a fast, uptodate and reliable mirror outside the US or UK I’d like to hear from you):

Cheers! Eric

LibreOffice 4.3.1 packages are ready

August 31, 2014 / / 3 Comments

On August 28, The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice 4.3.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, with over 100 fixes (including patches for two CVEs). The CVEs that were patched in LibreOffice 4.3.1 (and also in LibreOffice 4.2.6) are CVE-2014-3524 “CSV Command Injection and DDE formulas” and CVE-2014-3575 “Arbitrary File Disclosure using crafted OLE objects“.

If you want to be reminded of the new features in LibreOffice 4.3 then I advise you to read the Release Notes. My previous post on LO 4.3.0 mentions some of these improvements as well.

Note that when I upgraded the LibreOffice packages in my Slackware 14.1/current repository from 4.2.5 to 4.3.0 last month, the result was that there is no 4.2 version to be found anymore  in the repository (I offer LibreOffice 4.1.6 in the Slackware 14.0 repository). I added a build script for LibreOffice 4.2.6 in the sources directory, in case you want to try building 4.2.6 yourself. The two aforementioned CVE’s have been applied to the latest source tarballs of LibreOffice 4.2.6, versioned “4.2.6.3”.

Font compatibility:

With regard to MS Office compatibility, I have another remark. In the 4.2 releases I added copies of two open source TrueType fonts which are metric-compatible with two popular Microsoft fonts. Having these fonts available to LibreOffice means that the layout of MS Office documents when you open them in LibreOffice will be unaltered because the replacement fonts (Carlito for MS Calibri and Caladea for MS Cambria) have the same font metrics as the Microsoft ones. When updating the libreoffice.SlackBuild script I decided that I would rather have these two fonts available to the whole system, not just to LibreOffice. Therefore I created two separate packages for these fonts, and if you do not yet have the (non-free) Microsoft web core fonts installed I advise you strongly to install the open source Carlito and Caladea font packages.

Package availability:

LibreOffice 4.3.1 packages for Slackware 14.1 and -current are ready for download from the usual mirror locations:

A note about KDE integration:

If you are on KDE and simply “upgradepkg” the libreoffice packages, your application may suddenly look very out of style, having switched to a GTK look & feel. All you need to do is “installpkg” the new libreoffice-kde-integration package (I split the KDE support out of the big LO package and into its own separate package for LO 4.2.3, so it’s possible that you already have it). One thing is worth noting, despite the fact that this is called “KDE integration”: due to bugs in Qt4 which have not been patched in Slackware’s version of the Qt4 package, the KDE file picker has been disabled in this package. Here is the relevant piece of build output:

*WARNING: native KDE4 file pickers will be disabled at runtime, Qt4 fixes needed
*WARNING: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-37380 (needed)
*WARNING: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-34614 (needed)
*WARNING: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-38585 (recommended)

If you have a lot of spare time available, you can hunt down those three Qt4 patches, apply them to the Slackware package source and then recompile the qt4 and libreoffice packages…

Eric

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