I just downloaded and installed the latest version of LibreOffice (6.3.2) on Mac OSX Mojave (10.14.6). I do not have a JDK installed (if that matters). So, I fire up Impress, and first fix the ugliness of the fonts by creating a new clean template (without any meaningless graphics in it), change fonts etc. Then started creating slides for my lecture tomorrow.
I fire up LaTeXIt (it is a nifty program that lets you type in LaTeX equations and drag and drop images for those equations wherever you want). I try to drag and drop an equation (format PDF, PDF with outlined fonts, EPS). No joy. I get a circle with a stroke across it when I try to drop it into Impress. When I switch the format to JPEG/PNG (didn’t test TIFF), it works. So, drag and drop only seems to work for bitmap formats. This is senseless:
a) Bitmap formats don’t scale well. I often have to resize equations in Builds to show the significance of each term. I tried to scale a JPEG - it showed those ugly jagged edges as soon as the scale factor went beyond 1.2 or so (estimating).
b) For stuff like equations (or line plots, etc.), bitmap images take more space, which means that the resulting presentation is bigger.
How does one drag and drop vector format images on to Impress presentations? Simplicity is important here, and File Picture Insert is not a sensible workaround. I often have tens of equations timed to show with graphics in my slide decks, and any solution that involves saving each equation as its own image and then pasting it into Impress is not on this side of reality. A broken drag and drop was one of the reasons for me to switch from OpenOffice/Linux to Keynote/Mac OSX back in 2009, and I am not going back to that insanity.
As my username suggests, I am being forced to switch back to Linux (always loved KDE/Baghira) because of the senseless hardware choices being made by Apple. The machine on which I am typing this is likely my last Apple hardware as it does not have that butterfly keyboard, and a price tag close to being beyond the reach of most academicians. Linux just seems the more sustainable option. Its just this transition from Keynote to LibreOffice Impress that is worrying me. I have already identified a replacement for LaTeXIt - KLaTeXFormula.