On Friday 28 February 2020 13:22:19 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
> Thanks for all the support! Next time I'll insist on LaTeX again,I guess :(
>
> Anno domini 2020 Fri, 28 Feb 13:00:56 -0800
>
>  William Morder via trinity-users scripsit:
> > On Friday 28 February 2020 12:29:40 Michael wrote:
> > > On Friday 28 February 2020 02:21:21 pm Michael wrote:
> > > > On Friday 28 February 2020 01:54:26 pm Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
> > > > > Anno domini 2020 Fri, 28 Feb 13:49:24 -0600
> > > > >
> > > > >  David C. Rankin scripsit:
> > > > > > On 02/28/2020 12:41 PM, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
> > > > > > > But how do I persuade that piece of a genius to
> > > > > > > call gimp ???
> > >
> > > Ah, hit send too soon :(  Another possibility...
> > >
> > > As they are both open source, IF LO and FF are written in close to the
> > > same language and if you also know a similar language, it shouldn't be
> > > terribly difficult to rip out the FF code (about:preferences > General
> > > > Applications) and merge it into LO.  LO already has a 'Paths'
> > > section, so you could use that for your LO template.
>
> Ok, there's no way to configure that pestilence. It always calls xdg-open
> with absolute path (I'm sure somebody got payed quite a reasonable amount
> of money to remove the config dialog that was present some versions back).
> Patching LO is way too clumsy, so I'll have to patch xdg-open - at least
> that is still an editable textfile ... yes, cheers, somebody will soon
> discover that and patch it to be binary :(
>
> > For what it's worth, I open up graphics files for editing directly in
> > GIMP, and almost never use "open with" features; but especially not in a
> > word processing program. (Also, I use Open Office, and never warmed up to
> > LibreOffice. They say they're interchangeable, but it's not true.)
>
> Problem is: there are already images inside the presentation and I do not
> have the original images. And guess what: the "feature" "save image as .."
> is gone, too. Probably removed by the same GNOME as the config dialog.

In Open Office, I am pretty sure that I can still right-click on images and 
then choose to copy them. (This might have changed, as I haven't used that 
trick in a long while.) Then I manually paste them into a file manager, such 
as Konqueror, then open that file in GIMP. Then repeat the other steps as I 
said already. 

>
> > Too many things can go wrong, like everything crashing, etc. Better to
> > open it in GIMP, then edit, then save, and when you're done, import the
> > file, however you like to do it, into your office program.
> >
> > If you're working on short documents, maybe it doesn't matter too much,
> > but when you have large documents with lots of big graphics files, you
> > will run into that problem of crashing. And nothing kills inspiration
> > like a misbehaving machine.
>
> Oh yes. That's the next thing I fear. And the stuff is graphic-intense. Oh
> my, I think it's called progress ... wait a second, wasn't that the deault
> behaviour of "the great destroyer of companies and unlimited macro fun" aka
> "Word"?
>
> Nik
>

In general, I stick to the most primitive features of office programs. When I 
do page layout, I basically am doing it the old-fashioned way (I mean, before 
computers), so that my pages have the look of a real book. Whenever I use the 
automated "features", something almost always goes wrong; and the best 
possible result is to end up with pages that don't quite look like I want. 

Rather than expecting the machine to do things for me unasked, or to 
anticipate what I want, I just want my machine to obey me. If I wanted 
something with a mind of its own, I would get a dog, or worse, a cat. 

Bill