Concerns and suggestions for system applications (Libre Office, PDF Viewer)

Using /e/OS Applications
1

Hi,

I’d like to ask you about two built-in applications: LibreOffice Viewer and PDF Viewer Plus.

1. Libre Office Viewer - the size of this app is quite big. I think it never cooperated with me, maybe once :-). What I mean is that I can’t open a simple ODT file created in Libre Office 7 (simple text, nothing else). It seems that it hasn’t been updated for quite a while. Actually, it’s a version from 2018.

Suggestion: This application is useless and gets quite much free space. Could it be removed from the eOS build?

Inspiration: There’s an alternative application called Collabora Office which opens mentioned ODT file straightaway. Maybe this application might replace Libre Office viewer, but I have no idea if it fulfills your privacy and license rules?

2. PDF Viewer Plus - this app seems to be okay, it works fine, but what confuses (or I don’t know how to do that) is that it seems it doesn’t support searching within a PDF file. If this is true, then it’s the essential feature, at least for me. Anyway, I don’t have any alternative for now, cause I’m okay with PDF Viewer in MiXplorer app

I’m wondering what are your impressions regarding the above?

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Hi,

Some links about PDF viewer/ebooks and explorer on r/privacy on reddit:

Best.

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Correct. for whatever reason the app made it into the OS. We will never know…

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True, I use collabora office instead which works like a charm.

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I recommend Mupdf viewer from F-droid. It doesn’t come with many bells and whistles, but it can search and display table of contents. Also, privacy-wise, it doesn’t have access to the network, so it can’t secretly track you in that way.

For anyone who does not need search and just wants something simple, I recommend Secure PDF Viewer from Daniel Micay (can be found in Aurora store). It is developed by the creator of GrapheneOS.

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When viewing a PDF using PDF Viewer Plus if I click the share icon at the bottom there is no option for bluetooth, but all other share options are present.
In order to share a PDF I have to right click on it in Files, then click the share option.

/e/ 0.18, PDF Viewer Plus v 3.2, Sony ZX5C.

It is not possible to share via Bluetooth from within

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I can recommend LibreOffice & OpenOffice document reader | ODF LibreOffice & OpenOffice document reader | ODF | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository as a replacement for Libre Office Viewer; it can also open PDFs

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That version is more than two years old:

JavaCafe01 released this 07 Nov 2019

The most up-to-date version is 3.7
https://github.com/JavaCafe01/PdfViewer/releases

But if you want to use that, you would have to disable the version that ships with /e/ and install the latest from F-Droid.

It is a concern that /e/ is shipping forks of many apps that are several versions behind upstream,

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  1. LibreOffice Viewer: on the 1.0 /e/OS update LibreOffice Viewer (org.documentfoundation.libreoffice) is still completely broken and useless; while trying to open a doc/docx file it says that the file is read only and automatically closes) It can be disabled via app info.

  2. PDF Viewer Plus; is still at version 3.2 on the 1.0 /e/OS update, and as @petefoth mentioned, it is an outdated version and it can not be disabled (not even after installing another PDF viewer/reader and setting it to default) but at least is functional.