https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35361

--- Comment #82 from Patrick (volunteer) <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to steve from comment #81)
> If you find a way to add support for the other formats that would be a huge
> step for LO on macOS. This is one of the most common feature requests for LO
> on macOS and macOS users have come to expect quicklook support from
> applications that handle files.

Let me set expections: I am not going to "figure out" support for other
formats. What I am proposing is to investigate if NeoOffice's Quick Look plugin
will work with the .png thumbnail that LibreOffice inserts into most .od* files
when saving.

Assuming the NeoOffice Quick Look plugin can be made to work in LibreOffice,
you will only see a Quick Look image if your .od* has an embedded .png
thumbnail. No thumbnail (e.g. if an .od* file was saved in another app like
TextEdit or Microsoft Office that does not embed thumbnails), no Quick Look
preview.

TDF does not fund any dedicated macOS developers. All macOS bug fixes and
features are handled (or not) by a very small number of volunteers donating
their time like me. That is the most likely the reason why this bug has been
open since 2011: it looks like a massive project to implement a Quick Look
plugin that read and render your document without launching LibreOffice.

I am a volunteer who fixes LibreOffice bugs as a hobby in my spare. I don't
have the time (or money to fund other developers) to implement what you want so
there is no "second phase" in my plans. I can spare a little time to try to
copy the NeoOffice code over to LibreOffice.

It's a hacky solution and maybe not what anybody wants, but it is probably the
most I can do in my spare time. If that isn't good enough, then I recommend
that macOS users and/or organizations pool their funds and approach a
LibreOffice ecosystem partner like Collabora, Allotropia, etc. AFAICT most new
features in LibreOffice are funded by users and/or organizations paying an
ecosystem partner to implement their desired features. Note: I am not an
ecosystem partner, I only volunteer because I use LibreOffice to maintain all
of spreadsheets for my non-LibreOffice work.

> There is room for improvements as to what is shown in the odt quicklook
> preview, as various elements do not show. But priority wise support for the
> remaining types would be much more important than fine tuning quicklook for
> the one supported format imo.

I highly doubt that I will be able to override Apple's built-in .odt plugin. In
my experience, macOS uses an undocumented algorithm for which Quick Look
plugins handle which file formats. Once macOS chooses a plugin, that plugin
appears to be called for all files of a particular format. You can force your
once plugin to be used when testing using the "qlmanage" command, but macOS
chooses which plugin for the Finder.

So, even if we could force macOS to use the NeoOffice plugin, macOS would call
our plugin for all .odt files (even if created by TextEdit or Microsoft Office)
on your machine. IIRC, the NeoOffice plugin tries to call Apple's built-in .odt
plugin if an .odt file doesn't have an embedded thumbnail, but I vaguely
remember that that macOS stopped calling the NeoOffice plugin for .odt files
several versions of macOS ago and macOS would always use Apple's built-in .odt
plugin.

Realistically, I think we all need to keep our expectations low. Right now, the
NeoOffice Quick Look plugin bundled with my NeoOffice installation does not
even load on macOS Sequoia so this idea may end up being a dead-end. So it
looks like the first step needed is to compile and debug the NeoOffice Quick
Look plugin on macOS Sequoia.

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