This has happened to me two or three times. I haven't been able to identify any particular actions leading up to the problem. Suddenly I find that the pulldown menus are blank. Clicking on, for instance, "File" causes the usual background for the menu of actions (New,Open, Open Remote File, etc) to drop down as usual, but there are no actions displayed. One time I found that, at the same time the above happened, I was unable to select text. Clicking and dragging did not have the usual response. Instead of "highlighting" text as the cursor moved over it, the cursor just jumped from one character to the next. I was able to exit by pressing Alt>F and then x. (Probably should have pressed Q, now that I can see the menu again.) Closing and re-opening Writer restored full functionality. I am running Linux 17.1 with LibreOffice Version: 5.1.4.2, Build ID: 1:5.1.4-0ubuntu1~trusty1. Additional information from the About LibreOffice Help/about: CPU Threads: 2; OS Version: Linux 3.13; UI Render: default; Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8) I don't know how to cause this to happen, but it has happened to me three or four times. Sorry that I cannot provide further information. If there is some sort of log that I could check, please let me know so that next time I will be able to provide more useful information. Thank you, Richard
Maybe some problem with a GTK3 version that is too old? Have you considered upgrading to Linux Mint 18?
A slight correction: I am running Linux Mint KDE 17.1. When 18 comes out for KDE, I may give it a try.
Just making a mental note here, the symptoms described sound very similar to bug 101241. The issue is 100% different, since that one only affects v5.2 releases (up to 5.2.0.4, fixed in 5.2.1.1), and tables in Writer. Symptoms: blank menus, right-click menus and dialogs; flickering cursor (selection is also not shown, as you described above). Everything is repsonsive, and works as expected, the issue is purely visual. Noting the exact actions that lead up to this buggy behavior could help identifying if it's a reproducible issue.
@Richard LibO 5.2.4.2 is out. please upgrade and tell if issue persists (then revert status to UNCONFIRMED) or is gone (then change it to RESOLVED WORKSFORME). status NEEDINFO until then.
I have updated my installation to Version: 5.2.3.2, Build ID: 1:5.2.3~rc2-0ubuntu1~trusty1. Somewhere along the line between July of 2016, when I was running version 5.1.4.2, and now, running 5.2.3.2, the problem was resolved. I no longer experience the problem. I don't have any idea what fixed it or exactly when.
Let's use status WORKSFORME, then. Thank you for the feedback, Richard!