Installing the offline help is working, more or less smoothly if you know how to do [1]. But to my knowledge there is no way to get rid of the files except to delete manually (sudo rm -r <path>/libreoffce/help/), for example to always access the latest content, to save disc space, to change the language, etc. There are some reasons. My proposal is to put help content in extensions and install it via extension manager into the user space. That makes both installation and deletion easy. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Install/Linux#Installing_a_Help_Pack
Trivial removal with current Windows packaging. Linux only?
What have I been missing all this time? In Debian/Ubuntu I’ve always been able to run “apt remove libreoffice-help-*”. Isn’t this distro-related (i.e., NOTOURBUG) anyway? And given that distros have a package manager already, how exactly is it helpful to create further barriers by moving help into extensions? (the Extension Manager is like a mini-package manager itself, but worse, with neither automation features nor system integration.)
(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #2) > What have I been missing all this time? In Debian/Ubuntu I’ve always been > able to run “apt remove libreoffice-help-*”. > > Isn’t this distro-related (i.e., NOTOURBUG) anyway? > > And given that distros have a package manager already, how exactly is it > helpful to create further barriers by moving help into extensions? (the > Extension Manager is like a mini-package manager itself, but worse, with > neither automation features nor system integration.) @Heiko, please reply to Adolfo...
(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #2) > Isn’t this distro-related (i.e., NOTOURBUG) anyway? Arch Linux has no help packages, no idea how other handle this and we should first think about Windows users. Another point is that TDF provides the download of help files at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/. So IMHO no NAB.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #0) > My proposal is to put help content in extensions and install it via > extension manager into the user space. That makes both installation and > deletion easy. @Olivier, as the documentation expert here, what's your opinion on this ?
Uh... sorry for the late response IIRC that was once considered but ESC vetoed and invested in the makefiles for building and packaging Help. The reason forwarded was that Help was part of the product and not an (external/independent) extension. So it's an distro issue, IMHO.
Yes, and Windows users are already well supported via msiexec.exe based package handling. IMHO => WF or NOB for builds sans package management.
Andreas, I'm using the fresh package on Arch Linux. And AFAICS there is no extra *help that could be deleted. What do you think? https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/libreoffice-fresh/
The Arch Linux main libreoffice package provides en-US langpack + help files. All -i18n packages contain the specific language files + help files. Arch doesn't split out help packages any further. But that's a downstream distribution decision.
Thanks for the insights. It's annoying to not being able to switch to the online help but NOB for LibreOffice. Thanks for your packaging effort!