Hosting LibreOffice online

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Andor,

On Thu, 2012-02-09 at 16:05 +0100, Andor E wrote:
> I have read recently that LibreOffice 3.5 will support an online mode.

	Correct :-) at least - this is a prototype feature, and it needs a
chunk of work to productise it, but you can certainly play with it.

> I'm aware that this is still experimental, but I'd like to give it a
> test anyway, since we are highly interested in such a feature.

	Great :-)

>  I was unable to find any documentation how to host LibreOffice.
> Could someone give me some pointers, where I have to start?

	So - I spent some time writing this out below. Do you think you can
create a wiki page and dump the details in there in a prettier format by
any chance ? [ that would help others with the same question ], and mail
the link back :-)

	So - firstly, it requires a Linux server; and then it requires a very
recent version (git master) of gtk3, or failing that, I back-ported the
required fixes for openSUSE 12.1 here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/michael_meeks:/branches:/openSUSE:/12.1:/Update/standard/i586/
from
https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=home%3Amichael_meeks%3Abranches%3AopenSUSE%3A12.1%3AUpdate

	That's perhaps the easiest way to get it going. Without the above fixes
you're stuck with the FireFox 4 (only) websockets impl. with them, you
can use 'any modern browser' ;-)

	Then - you'll want a master compile of LibreOffice, we don't pre-build
this stuff into our generic 3.5.0 packages for various complicated and
unpleasant reasons.

	To get that checkout the steps here, and ask for help if you get stuck:

	http://www.libreoffice.org/developers-3/

	Adding --disable-java as an autogen.sh/configure option might make your
life significantly easier.

	Finally, when that is done do a 'make dev-install'

	cd install/program
	export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3
	export GDK_BACKEND=broadway
	./soffice -writer

	you should get a splash-screen and lots of churning debug, then nothing.
Head over to a browser:

	http://localhost:8080

	and you're ready to play, and debug & have some fun.

	Press '9' to turn on the debug bbox re-rendering to show what area is
re-rendered as you type (I have a patch to remove a hack to over-expand
that if you get this far), and zero to force-refresh the screen.

	HTH,

		Michael.

-- 
michael.meeks at suse.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot