Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

clockworkrat · 2012-01-22 21:37:30

I'm getting used to using vi(m) style keybindings for most things, but can't find any way to have this functionality within LibreOffice. There appear to be a plugin for Abiword, but I'm somewhat attached to LibreOffice at the moment. Has anyone come across such a thing?

eldragon · 2012-01-22 22:36:13

if you wish to torture yourself with vim (j/k here), then start uisng latex, which you can actually write in vim, and the output (after a while) is better than LO.

Evanlec · 2012-01-23 01:26:09

I'll have to agree with eldragon. I've never heard of any vi(m) plugin for LibreOffice or previously OpenOffice. However, there are such plugins for other applications, for example Eclipse. But Eclipse is an IDE so its programming oriented, like vim, so it makes more sense that there would be demand for a vi plugin for programming applications such as Eclipse. But for LO I'm afraid you're out of luck.
Better off learning LaTeX if you want to do word processing with Vim..there are other text-based markup languages that can output pdf/doc/html etc too..like RsT (ReStructured Text) or Markdown. Both are excellent btw. I wrote my Resume entirely in vim using RsT and some CSS (for the html output), and it looks beautiful! Not only that, but the raw .rst file is very human readable as well (some job sites ask you to copy & paste your resume, so this is actually useful).

clockworkrat · 2012-01-24 13:07:42

I may give it a shot, but I don't particularly want to be fussing about trying to get LaTeX working whilst writing coursework in the third year of an essay-heavy degree.

Trilby · 2012-01-24 13:31:15

I tinkered with latex, but I found I was much more productive writing html in vim then using one of the various converters to turn it into a pdf.

This works absolutely wonderfully. I have much more control over how my content is laid out - get to use css to make formatting changes across the whole document or sets of documents, and never have to load up OO/LO which, as well done as they are, are quite bulky programs.

I've churned out essays, syllabi, and other documents far faster in html in vim + htm-to-pdf tools far faster than in any office software.

The only downside is, at present, the best html-to-pdf converter I've found is a closed source tool (but still in AUR) called princeXML. The webkit engine does not seem to respect css page-break information. Firefox works great, but I don't know if there is a way to script against the gecko engine as easily.

Trilby · 2012-01-24 13:33:40

The other downside is when I churn out a beautiful document in record times and one of my coworkers then requests "can you send me the document file and we can use 'track-changes'" .... ARG

Also, and I suspect the same is true of latex, my html document files take up a very small fraction of the space that their odt/doc/docx counterparts would ... a *very* small fraction.

Trilby · 2012-01-24 13:34:52

Or, in other words, don't look for a vim plugin for office tools, look for office-tool plugins for vim!

byzkarl · 2012-01-24 14:10:50

I recommend Pandoc, which allows you to write in markdown, and then export it to Latex or otl or html. It's a wonderful tool. It has some support for citations, as well, but I haven't used that part too much.

Trilby · 2012-01-24 17:02:13

I was going to try pandoc - but if you don't already have all the haskel dependencies for something else it pulls in a full OS worth of dependencies.

owain · 2012-01-24 17:16:40

Trilby wrote:

The other downside is when I churn out a beautiful document in record times and one of my coworkers then requests "can you send me the document file and we can use 'track-changes'" .... ARG
Also, and I suspect the same is true of latex, my html document files take up a very small fraction of the space that their odt/doc/docx counterparts would ... a *very* small fraction.

I suppose you could send the 'document file' as a plain text email, to make this point and also to really mess with their heads

FreeTheBee · 2012-01-24 17:40:39

Vim with LaTeX works great and there are several plugins available as well. I use vim-latex myself, but another option could be the latex-box plugin. When I write with other people I let them edit the TeX file and tell them to ignore the code, I just fix the markup later. It's not ideal but better than writing in a wordprocessor To show changes you can use latexdiff, which allows you to generate a diff file from two LaTeX files. From the resulting TeX file you can then prepare a pdf with all the changes marked.

Trilby · 2012-01-25 00:35:45

owain wrote:

I suppose you could send the 'document file' as a plain text email, to make this point and also to really mess with their heads

These are the same people who cannot even grasp the concept of a command line interface.

One of my coworkers saw me checking my mail in mutt - she was baffled and was trying to ask what it was "why does it look like that ... but what does it look like if you close that window?" I gave up trying to help her understand that there was no window to close.

ngoonee · 2012-01-25 01:23:35

@Trilby, please do not triple-post consecutively, we have a 'edit post' button

Trilby · 2012-01-25 01:42:25

Sorry, noted.

TheGuyWithTheFace · 2015-04-21 18:29:42

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I came across here while searching the same question 3 years later, so I thought I'd share something I found for anyone reading this in the future:
https://github.com/seanyeh/vibreoffice

It looks fairly new and I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I think this might be what we're both looking for.

Last edited by TheGuyWithTheFace (2015-04-21 18:29:55)

snoblo · 2015-04-22 18:24:08

TheGuyWithTheFace wrote:

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I came across here while searching the same question 3 years later, so I thought I'd share something I found for anyone reading this in the future:
https://github.com/seanyeh/vibreoffice
It looks fairly new and I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I think this might be what we're both looking for.

I was wondering why I was getting so much traffic from bbs.archlinux.org ...
(I'm seanyeh on github)
vibreoffice was a fun project I worked on for a few days during break from school, but since I'm back at school now, I haven't had time to fix the bugs and it's not complete yet, but I hope to work on it more someday when I have the time.

smnpl · 2015-04-22 18:37:38

Trilby wrote:

...This works absolutely wonderfully. I have much more control over how my content is laid out ...

Just a small note on that one:
It may be convenient having the control, but LaTeX is intentionally taking some of you since in almost every case where one wanted the control LaTeX "knows" better how to do it. I'm not saying it's wrong controling it yourself if you want to! But, there is years over years of experience in layouting text correctly build into it and most of the time one shouldn't argue with what LaTeX suggests. (Though, I sure understand that often times you've got restrictions given by the institution you are creating the document for, which differ from the LaTeX defaults...)

Last edited by smnpl (2015-04-22 18:38:09)

thiagowfx · 2015-04-22 18:48:43

Since you people are talking about LaTeX, there is also LyX. I found a few references on the web about configuring it with vi{,m} keybindings.

Trilby · 2015-04-22 23:55:55

It's funny seeing my posts from 3 years ago. I've been using latex for *everything* for at least a couple years now.

EDIT: I also learned how to properly use the forums

x33a · 2015-04-23 07:05:23

Trilby wrote:

It's funny seeing my posts from 3 years ago. I've been using latex for *everything* for at least a couple years now.
EDIT: I also learned how to properly use the forums

I saw your 3 consecutive posts and I was like , then I saw the dates. How times change

Lesson to others, every one of us is *noob* some time in our lives, but with proper dedication and willingness to learn, you can become an Arch Linux moderator a short while later

PieterGen · 2015-04-23 11:50:42

@Trilby, what's your take on the case for HTML word processors? My day job is in education, a large institution, and MS Office is still king here. Much to my chagrin, btw.

I'm always looking for smart ways to make good looking documents that my MS-bound colleagues and students can easily read.
- For the past 8 years or so I've been using OpenOffice/LibreOffice (saving as .doc(x) or exporting to PDF.
- A different solution was HTML. Meaning I used OO/LO or an editor (Gedit, Leafpad etc.) and saving as HTML.
- I' ve looked hard at markdown. Meaning I might even work in nano which is an editor I realy like.

How's LaTex compared to that? Do you send the output as pfd or html?

Trilby · 2015-04-23 12:36:15

I also work in education - a large university. But I still just make everything in latex. I send things out in PDF. Independent of the software different people use, distributing doc(x) files is almost always a bad idea. They're huge. They're slow to load. They almost always get formatting butchered going between platforms, and even between different subversions of windows or MS Office. A pdf is a pdf is a pdf*.

If someone sends me a document for which I need to see the formatting, I might open it in google docs. Otherwise, I'd use one of the catdoc tools/scripts. If someone sends me a xls(s) file, I open it in R. If they send me a ppt(x) file, I stop interacting with them and leave a flaming bag of dog poop on their doorstep.

The fact that MS Office is popular among my colleagues is no reason for me to use it.

As for the HTML word processor idea - I have no take on it. People can use whatever tool they want to create their content. But if they expect me to use their favorite tool, they can go fly a kite. I currently have several active healthy collaborative projects - the projects work because we value and respect each others' differences not because we all conform to be the same so that no one can actually work at their most efficient.

Could you imagine ordering a steak at a restaurant and having the chef come out with a lump of raw meat expecting you to cook it yourself? Worse yet, this particular chunk of meat could only be cooked in a certain type of oven - so even if you bring it home, if you don't have the right oven, you couldn't cook it. No, the steak comes out prepared, cooked, seasoned. I couldn't care less what brand of oven the cook used, or if he pan seared it first, or if it was baked, or broiled. As long as the end product is agreeable, how it got there is none of my business.

To demonstrate that this is not one sided, I recently was working on a document - I frequently name my top-level LaTeX file 'doc.tex' which ends up producing a doc.pdf. I was going to send the document out, so I was going to rename it:

mv doc.pdf SomeDescriptiveName_DATE.pdf

Except I accidentally moved doc.tex to SomeName....pdf, then I sent that. I can tell you I felt like one giant idiot for that, and I was very appologetic. My oversight wasted my colleagues time, and a carelessness about each others time is a disrespect whether intentional or not. Now, this was an isolated incident, so I don't feel too bad, but many people seem to make a habit of analogous behavior with their favorite document-source-code format.

* I have noted one exception, where one of our lab's Windows computers has some adobe thing running that modifies all pdfs that are sent to the printer - so they look completely different. Grr.

PieterGen · 2015-04-23 12:55:54

Thanks Trilby. I share your thoughts on the .doc(x) format. Good idea on the catdoc tools. For some reason I use those in ranger to get a text preview of .doc, .docx, etc, but I don't use them outside of ranger.........hmmmmm......

And I will have to try out (La)Tex and Lyx

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-22 21:37:30

Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#2 2012-01-22 22:36:13

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#3 2012-01-23 01:26:09

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#4 2012-01-24 13:07:42

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#5 2012-01-24 13:31:15

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#6 2012-01-24 13:33:40

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#7 2012-01-24 13:34:52

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#8 2012-01-24 14:10:50

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#9 2012-01-24 17:02:13

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#10 2012-01-24 17:16:40

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#11 2012-01-24 17:40:39

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#12 2012-01-25 00:35:45

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#13 2012-01-25 01:23:35

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#14 2012-01-25 01:42:25

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#15 2015-04-21 18:29:42

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#16 2015-04-22 18:24:08

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#17 2015-04-22 18:37:38

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#18 2015-04-22 18:48:43

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#19 2015-04-22 23:55:55

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#20 2015-04-23 07:05:23

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#21 2015-04-23 11:50:42

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#22 2015-04-23 12:36:15

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

#23 2015-04-23 12:55:54

Re: Vi(m)-like plugin for libreoffice?

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