Re: LibreOffice 7 does not respect GTK theme settings on NetBSD 9.1 + 9.2

["David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>]

On Fri, 28 May 2021 at 22:50:15 +0200, netneo wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have been unable to get LibreOffice 7 (installed with pkgin) to
> respect my GTK settings.
> 
> I have tested this under both release 9.1 and 9.2. The interface has no
> theming, just a plain grey Windows 95-style appearance. I have tested
> this at great lengths on both bare metal and in virtual machines and
> spent hours looking for a solution, but to no avail.
> 
> Screenshots can be found here:
> 
> https://imgur.com/vT74UKJ
> https://imgur.com/nJHUUfT
> 
> Changing (or creating) the gtk3 settings.ini in the appropriate place
> under ~/.config/gtk-3.0 did not help. 
> 
> This has been an issue every time I installed LibreOffice 7, on both
> 9.1. and 9.2. I have tested this in different environments, such as
> LXQT, Fluxbox, and XFCE, with no success. Any other application respects
> my GTK settings fine. Certain systems require that you install a
> separate package such as 'libreoffice-gtk3' to make it look right, but I
> haven't found any equivalent in pkgsrc so I suppose it should not be
> necessary. 
> 
> Certain online wikis suggest setting one these environment variables: 
> 
> SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen
> SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3
> SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf5
> 
> However, this does not have any effect and I doubt this is actually
> applicable to NetBSD. 
> 
> >From online discussions, some users seem to have the same problem while
> other don't seem to have it at all. I have tried switching to the
> Libreoffice6 package after uninstalling v7 but that ultimately did not
> work for me either (upon reboot, the settings seem "lost"). 
> 
> Please do not hesitate to let me know what I can do to help you debug
> this.
> 
> Many thanks.
> netneo

Hello,

You didn't say specifically which version of LibreOffice from pkgsrc
you're using. I'm inferring it's probably from the 2021Q1 branch (and
so would be 7.1.1.2nb1). Versions of LibreOffice on recent stable
pkgsrc branches have the GTK3 VCL deliberately disabled, as it caused
rendering issues on NetBSD. The present version in pkgsrc-current (due
to end up in the 2021Q2 stable branch at month end) does have the GTK3
VCL enabled, so this should no longer be an issue for you then. (The
KF5 VCL is presently not enabled in pkgsrc. That's another topic.)

Please send direct emails to pkgsrc-users%netbsd.org@localhost, not
pkgsrc-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost. The latter is intended as a mailing list that
archives bug reports submitted through our Gnats PR system, and is not
for direct emails/discussions. (Alternately, if you have a specific
issue you want to file as a bug, please use
http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/sendpr.cgi?gndb=netbsd.) Otherwise,
you're also sending to a list that has fewer subscribers or people like
myself who may occasionally look through it, but you risk receiving a
less timely answer.

Regards,

Dave