Xfce Forum

JackC

Member

Registered: 2013-07-08

Posts: 2

Problem with xfwm4 + libreoffice4

Greetings,

I recently discovered some really odd behavior in XFCE along with the new 4.0 branch of libreoffice which I'd like to share here.
My problem: in libreoffice, the path settings (under options) don't remember my working directory anymore and always reset
to my home directory - which can be very annoying as I have a huge folder with document files on a automounted network
path and have to go back to the directory each time. Now, what does all of this have to do with XFCE, you might ask?
Well, after asking around a bit I found out it works just fine with KDE. I really didn't want to switch my beloved XFCE
for KDE, so testing around bit further I found out it works just fine in LXDE as well. So, out of curiosity, I switched xfwm4
with openbox (by running "openbox --replace" in a terminal) and now it's working with XFCE as well. I can only assume, it has
something to do with how libreoffice handles its dialogues for file operations like open, close, path setting etc. I should also
add that everything still worked fine under xfce 4.8, so it's somehow tied to the version of xfwm4 that comes with 4.10.
I'm using Fedora 18, with XFCE 4.10 as shipped by Fedora. However, I managed to replicate the same odd behavior
with the exact same solution (replacing xfm4 with openbox) on Linux Mint 15. Now I'd be really interested if anyone here
can confirm this to me and if maybe's there's a chance to work this out in xfwm so I could switch back to xfwm in 4.12 ;-)

Thanks a lot for reading.

Jack

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Problem with xfwm4 + libreoffice4

Hi Jack,

IDK if it helps or not:

I am using Mint, but it's Mint 14. I have LibreOffice Version 4.0.4.2 (Build ID: 400m0(Build:2)) according to its Help/About information. Xfwm4 is version 4.10.1-0ubuntu1~ppa0.12.10.1. (I have the LibreOffice 4.0.x and the Xfce 4.10 & 4.12 PPAs in my sources list, so they're probably newer versions than "stock" Mint 14, but IDK what versions of same Mint 15 uses.)

Are these the same versions that you have installed? If you can think of any other components that I should check the version designations on, let me know.

I can't currently test this on a directory on a different computer that is accessed via a network (auto-mounted or manually) because I don't currently have any remote directories set up. But I did change the path to my documents directory back and forth (exiting LO at various times), and the app kept my changed setting each time.

I'd be happy to do further testing for you, if you like. Unfortunately, I'm not very clear on how to configure remote directories in Xfce/Mint. I managed it in the past with Ultimate Edition, but either I have forgotten how or it's different in Mint (or Xfce). Do your LO path settings fail to set/"remember" on local directories as well, or only when you set a remote one as the variable?

Regards,
MDM

---

Mountain Dew Maniac

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ozjd

Member

From: Hawkesbury NSW Australia

Registered: 2012-02-05

Posts: 560

Website

Re: Problem with xfwm4 + libreoffice4

I've seen this behaviour before with both LO 3.5 and 4.0 on Fedora 17 with Xfce 4.10. I found it did work in KDE which uses a different dialog to set it. However on switching back to Xce it lost the setting again.
My documents directory is on a local drive but not in my home directory. I have a separate /Data partition so I don't need to reinstate data from backups after installation. No other application has a problem working with that drive only LibreOffice.

JackC

Member

Registered: 2013-07-08

Posts: 2

Re: Problem with xfwm4 + libreoffice4

Hi Jack,

IDK if it helps or not:

I am using Mint, but it's Mint 14. I have LibreOffice Version 4.0.4.2 (Build ID: 400m0(Build:2)) according to its Help/About information. Xfwm4 is version 4.10.1-0ubuntu1~ppa0.12.10.1. (I have the LibreOffice 4.0.x and the Xfce 4.10 & 4.12 PPAs in my sources list, so they're probably newer versions than "stock" Mint 14, but IDK what versions of same Mint 15 uses.)

Are these the same versions that you have installed? If you can think of any other components that I should check the version designations on, let me know.

I can't currently test this on a directory on a different computer that is accessed via a network (auto-mounted or manually) because I don't currently have any remote directories set up. But I did change the path to my documents directory back and forth (exiting LO at various times), and the app kept my changed setting each time.

I'd be happy to do further testing for you, if you like. Unfortunately, I'm not very clear on how to configure remote directories in Xfce/Mint. I managed it in the past with Ultimate Edition, but either I have forgotten how or it's different in Mint (or Xfce). Do your LO path settings fail to set/"remember" on local directories as well, or only when you set a remote one as the variable?

Regards,
MDM

Hi,

thanks for your quick reply. First off, I was incorrect in saying Mint 15, my Mint system is version 14 (Nadia) as well (I have Mint on my notebook, my main computer runs Fedora 18), using the "stock" packages of Libreoffice, which is version 3.6.2.2. And no, as ozjd stated, this problem does not relate to my data being stored on a network drive. I tried with a local directory and the problem remains.
Something else I noticed - at least on fedora - you have to install the pangox-compat packages in order to fix the UI in Libreoffice.org's official 4.0 rpm packages
(otherwise it looks pretty ugly, like a windows 95 version running under wine) ... that package provides "/usr/lib64/libpangox-1.0.so.0", if it's missing, the open/safe dialogue is different and it's
working as a side-effect (with the disadvantage of that ugly UI).
What really did fix the problem for me is using openbox instead of xfwm4, which seems to have no major disadvantages with xfce.

Jack