- There is no way to activate hardware acceleration in Libreoffice I'm using Debian testing amd64 Libreoffice version is 5.2.4.2.1+ Details of my GPU Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.
- I used to have great OpenGL transitions in impress, but since I upgraded to OOo 3.2 hardware acceleration does not work anymore. I cannot find any openoffice.org-ogltrans package for Ubuntu Karmic that works with OOo 3.2 and the option 'Use Hardware Acceleration' in OOo is greyed out.
- Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Vs Opengl
- Libreoffice Impress Hardware Acceleration
- Libreoffice Use Hardware Acceleration
- Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Table
- Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Formulas
Upgrading is a little trickier though. Annoyingly, unless you have the very recent LibreOffice 3.4.5, you can't upgrade to LibreOffice 3.5: you have to uninstall the version you have and install.
Analysis A senior bod behind LibreOffice says the open-source suite's spreadsheet app lags behind much-nippier rival Microsoft Excel - but the hardware acceleration announced this month should close that gap.
And that acceleration could give the freely available productivity suite a leg up on tablets, smartphones and other mobile gadgets, too.
Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Vs Opengl
As reported earlier this month, LibreOffice will be updated to hook into AMD's HSA technology: this grants graphics chips access to memory allocated to applications, allowing the hardware to easily and rapidly crunch through program data while the system's general-purpose processors work on other things.
Ultimately, HSA-aware software should run faster, provided suitable silicon is present, by offloading work onto the graphics processor, which may otherwise be sitting mostly idle.
Last week, LibreOffice maker the Document Foundation admitted AMD to its ranks of advisory board members; other bedfellows include Intel, Red Hat, SuSE and Google. Version 4.2 of the suite, due out in February next year, should support the GPU-powered acceleration thanks to contributions from AMD engineers and others.
“Spreadsheet has traditionally been pretty weak in LibreOffice from a performance and memory perspective. We want to fix that and make it really good,” Document Foundation board member, SuSE staffer and Linux desktop architect Michael Meeks told The Reg.
“We have had a performance gap with Microsoft in the past and we are eager to close that.
“People build spreadsheets to crunch data to the point of boredom - bigger and bigger and slower and slower. We can make a tool that’s bigger and let them crunch more data in rich ways.'
Once on a par with Excel, at least in terms of speed and memory use, LibreOffice can hope to attract that hard-to-catch beast: the desktop spreadsheet power user, traditionally a Microsoft Office animal. The open-source suite's spreadsheet app is undergoing “huge structural changes”, we're told, with code rewritten and with systematic unit testing.
“That should put us back in the spreadsheet game in my view,” Meeks reckoned.
But isn’t the spreadsheet war over, and didn’t Microsoft win with Excel? “There are loads of ways to put us back in the spreadsheet game, in my view,” said Meeks.
One such way, perhaps, is getting the gear onto smaller devices, such as tablets, whose popularity is mushrooming.
The aforementioned hardware acceleration could give heavyweight LibreOffice an edge on trendy handheld gear as well as boring old PCs: a coalition of tech firms including AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Samsung are part of the non-profit HSA Foundation, which is working on an open specification for the GPU-CPU sharing technology on a wide-range of fondleslabs and other systems.
HSA-aware code is written in a new platform-independent language called HSAIL, which runs in a virtual machine and thus allows a program to comfortably target a host of compatible HSA hardware. Given the number of mobile processor designers and manufacturers in AMD's foundation, hardware acceleration for mobile gear is on the cards.
ARM ports of LibreOffice do exist, but these are targeted at mini-beasts such as the Raspberry Pi.
For handhelds, Android and iOS ports of LibreOffice are being worked on, but they are still at a preliminary stage – as is a browser version of the suite: a HTML5 version was first discussed in 2011. The Document Foundation needs cash to finish that off as well as someone to provide the servers on which the backend of the web version runs.
There’s just two modes for the Android and iOS ports – viewer and full-office suite - and there’s some initial touchscreen support with pan and zoom and minimal editing. Meeks concedes there are “formidable user interface problems around touch”, adding that with a “couple of people” and a partner to fund the work it would be done “in a couple of months”.
One big problem remains, however: the full LibreOffice suite, at 50MB, is currently too big for download to mobile, realistically.
'We have a long way to go but we are getting there'
It’s been two and a half years since LibreOffice was formed in a fork from the Oracle-controlled OpenOffice, and the Document Foundation has been concentrating on the basics ever since: fixing bugs and ripping out old code gone to seed. The latest version, 4.0 released in February, had better handling of file formats and improved interoperability with Microsoft Office; 275 out of 500 dialogue boxes were cleaned up; and thousands of unused methods and code resembling ASCII art were thrown out.
In fact, nine million new lines of code were added to 4.0, and 12 million taken out, we're told. (It has about seven million lines of code under version control as of right now.) Up to 15,000 quality assurance tests have been run on the new code to detect any crash-causing scenarios.
“There was a huge build up of technical debt in the code base and people would do appalling hacks to avoid re-factoring and doing it right,' said Meeks. 'We are finally starting to do things right .. these days we are doing more exhaustive changes and we hope to get it right with more manageable code in the long term.
“In the past there was this fear of breaking things that were culturally engrained. Now, there’s a nuanced view that if you break something perhaps that’s good because you need to change something. I think people enjoy this level of code clean up, it's satisfying. We write unit tests to limit the breaks.”
There will come a point at which the changes to LibreOffice become so significant that the suite will no longer simply be an OpenOffice fork. That time will come soon, judging by raw numbers and momentum. Black Duck’s Ohloh developer-monitoring service counts 350 programmers and 20,700 code commits for LibreOffice over the last 12 months, versus 50 devs and 4,900 commits for OpenOffice.
Also, OpenOffice's source code is released under an Apache Software Foundation (ASF) licence while LibreOffice is available under the GNU LGPL; Apache won’t accept code contributions from non-ASF licences, meaning OpenOffice is cut off from LibreOffice's changes.
“It’s clearly a similar code base – these are members of the same family, and for a long time they will have to be like that,” said Meeks.
The new and improved code should dovetail into these grander plans to speed up the software, reduce its footprint, and make it easier to update for more platforms in the future.
Will LibreOffice finally offer something credible to Microsoft Office? We've been down this route too many times to do anything other than roll our eyes, at least at this stage. Smartphones, tablets and browser-based suites have everything to play for as the traditional desktop gets left behind. (But don't forget Microsoft Office is coming to iPhones, iPads and iPods, as well as Redmond's Surface tablets.)
One thing is certain, however: with so much going on, LibreOffice will look less like OpenOffice. And it won't necessarily be the big platform stuff that will transform LibreOffice. It's the state of the code inside.
“We have a long way to go but we are getting there and that’s encouraging,” Meeks said of tidying up, refactoring and testing.
Still, there is excitement surrounding even the smallest changes; something that's much better than the last days of the OpenOffice Empire under the moribund Sun Microsystems, and later Oracle. “You wake up and you are excited. It’s much better than it was,” said Meeks. ®
Got strong opinions on this issue? Why not fire up a thread in the Register software forums.
Dive into LibreOffice – Hidden Gems
Discover some hidden and lesser known features in LibreOffice, to help you work faster and smarter (and gain extra geek points).
If you've been following the development of LibreOffice since it was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, you'll know that a great deal of effort has been put into cleaning up the source code. This has made the suite easier to compile, and, more importantly, it's easier for new contributors to get involved. Along the way, new features have been added and Microsoft Office compatibility has been improved, but by and large the software doesn't look or feel drastically different in 2017.
That's a good thing, of course – office suite users tend to value consistency and stability rather than shiny new widgets with every release. But there are some changes and new features that could really take LibreOffice up a level, and although they aren't available out of the box, with a bit of tweaking you can try them out. In this article, we'll show you some tips and tricks to get more out of LibreOffice, using features you may not have come across before.
Try a Tasty MUFFIN
In recent years, some LibreOffice users have been asking for a more 'modern' user interface alternative to the regular toolbar layout. However, implementing such a change is no easy task. The LibreOffice design community [1] has to constantly juggle the demands of various types of users, some of whom like things exactly as they are and resist any change, and others who want the software to look and feel more like Microsoft Office. Whatever the design team does, someone will be unhappy.
That means lots of things need to be considered when making large-scale changes to the GUI, potentially breaking many workflows. In December 2016, The Document Foundation (the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice) announced MUFFIN, the 'My User Friendly and Flexible Interface' [2]. This concept will be gradually introduced in forthcoming versions of the suite, providing users with multiple GUI layout options:
- The standard layout with two toolbars at the top
- A single toolbar mode to save screen space
- A single toolbar with a pop-out sidebar to provide extra functionality
- And, the new NotebookBar
You may be thinking at this point: why so many options? Couldn't the design team just focus on one layout and make it perfect? Well, that would be one approach, but it risks alienating a big chunk of users. The LibreOffice design community has to keep long-time users (who want to stick with regular toolbar layouts) satisfied, while also enticing new users who want a more 'modern' design. The Document Foundation is financed largely by donations from end users, so it makes sense to keep as many as possible happy, even if the end result is a bunch of interface options.
One of those options, as mentioned above, is the NotebookBar. This made its first appearance in LibreOffice 5.3, but even if you're running that version of the suite, you may not have tried it yet (more on that in a moment). The NotebookBar was developed by the design community as a way to 'evolve past the restrictions of toolbars' [3]. Essentially, it's a large toolbar where designers have the freedom to do anything they want with the space. To quote the design team:
Libreoffice Impress Hardware Acceleration
'With a blank canvas, a designer can place any UI widget on it, including the usual buttons with or without a label, a section label to identify the group of controls, or more advanced widgets like tabs. They also have the ability to define any dimension for buttons, so they serve as a visual attractor, and all together have a larger catalog of controls to choose from tha[t] couldn't be found in classic toolbars. Furthermore, they can define that the main menu can be hidden, or whether it should have a particular icon theme, for instance.'
What's especially interesting here is the use of contextual groups. This means that some controls and sections of the NotebookBar are disabled when you're doing certain tasks. For example, you probably always want access to buttons for loading and saving files, and performing undo and redo operations, but you don't need immediate access to cropping and rotation operations unless you've clicked on an image. To see how this works, see the design team's mock-up in Figure 1.
Libreoffice Use Hardware Acceleration
Give It a Go
That's enough background – here's how to try it. The NotebookBar is included in LibreOffice 5.3, but because it's very much an experimental feature and not recommended for production use, you won't find it in the menus or options dialog. To make it available, go to Tools | Options in the menu, and then Advanced on the left-hand side. Check the Enable experimental features (may be unstable) box and click OK – you'll be prompted to restart LibreOffice.
After that, go to View | Toolbar Layout in the menu and choose NotebookBar. Sagemcom f st 5260cv specs. Et voila, you'll see the shiny new interface like shown in Figure 2. Immediately, you'll notice that the NotebookBar contains several tabs along the top to switch between various categories. Click a tab and the buttons underneath change accordingly – and these buttons are grouped into categories as well. It might look a little odd compared to the traditional toolbar approach, and you may notice some glitches in places (e.g., missing icons), but it is very much an experimental feature as mentioned.
Now, there are some alternative layouts for the NotebookBar as well. Click on the document icon in the top left and choose Menubar to enable the menu. Then go to View | NotebookBar and try one of the other designs – Contextual groups and Contextual single. If you choose the former, try inserting an image; when you then click on the image, you'll see that the NotebookBar's design changes to offer functionality relating to images. Type some text, though, and the NotebookBar adapts accordingly. (See Figure 3 for an example.)
You can now spend some time exploring the NotebookBar and its various layouts, but if you want to return to the normal GUI, click View | Toolbar Layout | Default. As we speak, the LibreOffice design team is working on updates and refinements to the NotebookBar, and it may even become a standard option (i.e., not just experimental) in the next version of the suite, 5.4, which is due in late July or early August 2017. If you're a big fan of the traditional GUI and the NotebookBar doesn't float your boat, worry not – there are no plans to remove the standard toolbar layout. For more information on the NotebookBar, including a roadmap for upcoming releases, see the TDF Wiki [4].
Command-Line Tricks
Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Table
You probably start LibreOffice via your desktop environment or window manager, clicking a button to start the suite as a whole or one of its modules (e.g., Writer or Calc). But you can run it from the command line as well with some useful extra options. First of all, the exact command you use will vary depending on your distro and how you installed LibreOffice. If you're using your distro's own packages, you can usually start it with soffice (referring to StarOffice), loffice, or libreoffice. However, if you've installed using the packages on LibreOffice's own website, you'll need to add the version number, such as libreoffice5.3.
To start the suite with Writer being displayed immediately (rather than the Start Center), use:
For Calc use --calc, and for Impress use --impress; these parameters are especially useful if you're creating new launcher buttons in your desktop or window manager. For Impress, it's possible to launch the suite and go straight into a presentation, without initially displaying the user interface, like so:
This will switch to full-screen mode immediately, and when the presentation ends, LibreOffice is closed. This feature is handy if you give a lot of presentations, in that you can link them to launchers on your desktop or window, and have them shown seamlessly in just a couple of clicks (without having to fiddle around in the GUI for a few seconds). Another related parameter is --view, which shows a document in read-only mode – so no editing is allowed.
If you've been unlucky and had LibreOffice crash on you, the next time it's started, it will offer to (try to) recover lost data. You can keep this from happening by passing the --norestore option. Similarly, if you're having major problems even starting LibreOffice (e.g., due to an issue with extensions, hardware acceleration, or your user profile) then you can activate the suite's safe mode using --safe-mode. This pops up a dialog box – like in Figure 4 – from which you can disable certain options or even reset to 'factory settings' (i.e., like a completely fresh installation).
Libreoffice Hardware Acceleration Formulas
If you want to print a bunch of files without tediously having to open them all up and click Print for each one, do this:
Note the single dash before p here. Supply as many documents as you want; they will all be sent to the default printer. If you have multiple printers and want to specify one, use the --pt option followed by the name of the printer, and then the document(s) you want to print.
One of the biggest time-savers when using LibreOffice from the command line is batch conversion of documents. Consider this, for example:
That generates PDF versions of all Open Document Format Text (ODT) files in the current directory. If you have a bunch of Microsoft Word documents and want to convert them to LibreOffice's native format, use this:
Now, LibreOffice includes import and export filters for a huge range of file formats, and you can use many of these in your batch conversion jobs. Unfortunately, however, the documentation listing these formats is lacking – so you have to look in the right places. Suppose we want to convert an ODF document created by LibreOffice Writer into Microsoft Word 97 format. The command to use is this:
But how do we know to use this exact command? The trick is to look at the LibreOffice source code tree, and specifically the list of file format filters [5]. On that web page, you'll see a file called MS_Word_97.xcu – so you know a filter exists for Word 97 files. If you click it, you can see this line toward the top of the file, following the first block of comments:
This tells us that 'MS Word 97' is the name we should use when applying the filter. (It's also the same as the filename, but without underscores – but it's always worth checking the content of the filter file as well.)
With this trick, supplying the document extension followed by the filter name in quotes, you have access to a wide range of file formats. If you're working with large collections of legacy documents and need to shift them from one format to another, this command can be a godsend. Yes, it's a bit fiddly having to poke into the LibreOffice source code to explore this, but it works. And, if you want to contribute back to the suite, an effort to document this would be very welcome by the dev team!
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