LibreOfficeKit API in action: new API to access LibreOffice functionalities

dev.blog.documentfoundation.org

40 points·mariuz··8 comments

Very nice. Maybe the freedesktop world can finally replicate how Windows is able to embed a mini excel viewer into the filepicker.

I don't work in this space at all but how does this stacks up to Apache POI? The mini-GUI functionality seems cool

Its a ton heavier, because you need a full LibreOffice install effectively, but it does a lot more than Apache POI, so it depends on whether your use-case warrants the extra features.

It would be good to see scripting language access - I can imagine people might want to use Python or similar to automate document creation.

Related but not quite the same interface. Libreoffice already supports Python in macros, and you can run Libreoffice headless on the command line.

https://help.libreoffice.org/6.3/en-US/text/sbasic/python/ma...

I've used this functionality to automate running Python scripts to update speadsheets using Libreoffice Calc in a container so non-devs can have their cake and eat it.

Thanks! I've had a little look at this, but it seems so inside-out to me. I'd just like to run commands to make a spreadsheet, add sheet, add content to cell in sheet, that sort of thing. I might take another look though if you got it to work.

Alright, so if I pull this into WASM, I can finally have a fully featured rich text editor on the web? If so, I'm sold!

There are people working on compiling Libreoffice to WASM, but it is a separate effort

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