LibreOffice Gets "KDE 5" Integration That's A GTK3/KDE5 Hybrid

It's unfortunately too late for the upcoming LibreOffice 6.0 open-source office suite that was branched two weeks ago, but its next release will feature a KDE5 desktop back-end.

Being merged today to LibreOffice mainline Git is a KDE5 back-end that is mostly the existing KDE4 back-end ported to using Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5.

Immediately following that commit was the GTK3_VC5 VCL plug-in. This code mostly displays the GTK3 version of the LibreOffice user-interface but replaces the file and folder picker with that of KDE's KF5 dialogs.

Developer Milian Wolff of KDAB explained, "This gives us a well-maintained GTK LO base with basic KDE integration with minimum effort...Functionality wise, most of the features of the KDE4 dialog are supported. You can pick files and folders, and save files under a new name. Some custom checkbox widgets are supported, but lists, buttons and preview widgets are not yet implemented. Also, loading remote files via KIO is not possible yet."

This new back-end and plugin can be enabled by compiling LibreOffice Git with --enable-gtk3-kde5. This improved KDE5 desktop integration for this leading open-source office suite will premiere with the LibreOffice 6.1 release while LibreOffice 6.0 is due for release around the start of February.