Re: [Emacs-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r111707: * doc-view.el: Use (and prefer) soffice as default ODF->PDF

[Tassilo Horn]

Tassilo Horn <address@hidden> writes:

> Ok, to clear up the situation a bit: unoconv is probably more powerful
> than soffice.  For example, it is possible to run it as a server that
> accepts conversion requests from multiple clients.  doc-view doesn't
> need that.
>
> doc-view just uses either unoconv or soffice to convert OpenDocument
> or Microsoft Office documents to PDF.  Both tools can do that just
> fine, ...

Now I've found a more serious issue with soffice.  It doesn't work when
there's already a running LibreOffice instance.  In that case, it simply
finishes successfully without doing anything.  That's already reported
as a bug:

    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37531

Reading that report, it doesn't seem likely to be fixed anytime soon,
and even then it'll take time until the buggy versions won't be used
anymore.

Fortunately, there's also a workaround.  By default, LibreOffice use the
directory ~/.config/libreoffice/<major-version>/ for storing
customizations, scripts, settings, etc.  This can be overridden using
the undocumented -env:UserInstallation option, and when using separate
UserInstallation directories per invocation, it works just fine.

I've just committed a change that adds the option

    -env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/libreoffice-docview<tmp-suffix>

to the options passed to soffice.  This seems to add about 0.5 seconds
to the ODF->PDF conversion time, but that's still much faster than
unoconv.

These temporary directories are deleted immediately after the conversion
has finished in order not to clutter the filesystem with lots of 1.7MB
dirs.

Bye,
Tassilo