Use LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an open-source office productivity suite which comes from The Document Fundation (TDF).

This suite is available nowadays on most operating systems like Linux, Windows or MacOS for free.

The good news is that it's also downloadable for Haiku, via Haiku Depot. Let's review how it can be used.

Install

The installation of LibreOffice is quite simple on Haiku. You just need to launch Haiku Depot, type "libreoffice" and the software will appear in the "featured packages" tab:

You can then proceed with the installation.

LibreOffice suite

The first time you launch LibreOffice, it will display the main screen below :

The current version on Haiku is 24.8.1.1 (corresponding to August 2024). From that main window, you can create various documents:

• Letters via the Writer
• Spreadsheets vith Calc
• Presentations via Impress
• Drawings and schemas via Draw
• Formulas with Math
• Databases via Base

I'm not sure that Base and Math applications will be of great interest on Haiku, so I will only talk about the others applications in this article. If you use Haiku on a daily basis on a bare metal machine, these applications should be quite helpful.

Writer

When you first open Writer, it displays a blank document like below :

This application will be useful when you need to write letters documents.

Something to notice is the Tip of the Day. For instance, you can change the icon theme as explained below :

So let's change the current theme in the options:

Nice, I find the below new icons is little bit more clear :

When you create a document via the "New> Text Document" :

You can select various templates :

It will save you some time because the model of the letter is already built, and you just need to change the text or adjust the logo :

There's a also a feature to create Form, with Text Box, Option Button, Combo Box, etc, but I didn't test it:

In addition to text, if needed, you can insert objects like images, charts, shapes :

When you are happy with your document, you can save it to ".odt" format :

As you can see, other formats like Word or Rich Text are available. Let's now try to print :

What you need to know is that as LibreOffice is not a native Haiku application, feature like printing are not yet handled correctly.

It means the best solution is to export you document to PDF :

And then open it with the native BePDF application to do the print :

I've found the usage of Writer under Haiku fine with a correct responsiveness.

It's not totally true when your documents are having a lot of pictures, so you will need to be patient in that case.

A nice feature is to be able to open documents created by the Pages application from MacOS :

And of course, you can have a Text document which is having mainly photos inside it like below :

The only missing feature for the moment is the ability to print directly from LibreOffice, maybe this part will be fixed in the future.

Calc

The Calc application is really useful to handle spreadsheets under Haiku. When you first open Calc, a blank spreadsheet is displayed :

Like in Excel, you can enter formulas when you start an input with the "=" character.

And there's an help displayed on the fly, for instance on the SUM function :

A nice feature available is the "AutoFilter" :

If will allow to use it on a list of values like below :

And select only the values you would like to display :

Another useful feature is the Pivot Table :

If you don't know about Pivot Tables, you can check the LibreOffice chapter on Pivot Tables.

You can of course sort data on ascending/descending order :

The freezing of rows and columns are also possible :

Like Excel, Calc propose to edit / run macros in a document:

You will have a dedicated window to edit macros :

I didn't check this feature in details, so you can check by yourself if it could fit your need.

Functions are useful in Calc.

What is nice is that the list of available functions can be displayed on the right of the window, up to the "Functions" icons

:

In your document, you can also apply some changes on the font colors, cell colors and other formatting :

I've then tried to use Calc with bigger documents.

This is the case of the OpenDataQuest tool which is a spreadsheet to facilitate quests creation for the Dark Age of Camelot game.

The idea is that when the quest description is completed like below :

It will write the SQL query for the quest creation to apply on your database :

Why this document can be big ? It proposes drop down menu like the type of step for quests :

But when it comes to select a NPC (Non Player Character) from a list, it can be very huge :

After testing that kind of documents, the display takes a few seconds but it's still OK.

However when there are documents with a lot of pictures, it's clearly too slow to be useable.

It's the case for the document below which is a village builder for the Clash of Clans game :

This is the kind of limit for Calc under Haiku.

Some people would say also that spreadsheets are not supposed to be used for that kind of usage :)

Impress

What about creating some nice presentations ?

Impress is like Powerpoint, and when you create a new document, you can select a model inside a templates list :

Let's select one :

The application is nicely done, and you can add any kind of forms in your presentation :

For instance labels or stickers :

You can apply transformations :

Like rotation :

You can also use a more complex feature like "Interaction" which will apply to a form :

For instance, clicking on the form during the presentation will go to the previous slide :

It's also possible to do slide transition effects in your presentations.

Like the Dissolve effect below :

It's up to you to select the best effect :)

When you are happy with your document, you can visualize the result with the "Slide Show" menu :

You can then export the document to the ".odp" format :

As you can notice the PowerPoint format is also possible.

In case you need to have a PDF version, you can use the "Export As" menu :

When you need to create nice presentations under Haiku, the Impress application is really a solution to look at.

Draw

Let's finalize this article with the Draw application.

When you open Draw for the first time, you will have a blank document :

However let's select the template available to check the features :

As you can see, you can create some nice schemas :

A required feature when creating schema is to have the ability to snap to grid.

And it's the case of Draw :

You can of course insert all kind of shapes :

Like flowchart :

What is more surprising is that 3D objects are also available :

For that select a 3D model :

And draw it inside your document :

Nice effect isn't it ? I'm not sure if it can be useful for schemas, but why not.

There are also more advanced features like stretching the model :

Or applying a rotation :

Another possibility is that once you have created a 2D form like "2025" below :

You can then convert it to "3D effects" like below :

Please note that this kind of feature is using a lot of rendering computation, so the display might become slow in this case.

Once you're happy with your schema, you can save it to ".odg" format :

If needed you can export it to other formats like PDF or SVG :

Conclusion

LibreOffice is really a nice port available on Haiku and can be very helpful for letters writing, spreadsheets creation or in case of presentations.

If you would like to discover the full potential of the tool, you can check the official documentation available at https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/

The documentation is splitted into various guides :

For instance, there's a dedicated guide for Calc:

I hope you have find this article interesting, and if you want to share the tools you're using for your office needs under Haiku, just put a comment below :)