LibreOffice Flatpak and Nemo-Preview

[rammjet]

Linux Mint has a feature of the file manager Nemo which allows previewing a document without opening the responsible app. The feature is called Nemo-Preview and it is based on Sushi for Gnome.

When I install the default LibreOffice in the Mint repositories, nemo-preview presents a preview of LibreOffice documents. But the version of LibreOffice in the Mint repositories is older.

To get a newer version, I removed the existing LibreOffice and installed the Flatpak version. However, then nemo-preview cannot preview LibreOffice documents. I get the following error:

Sep 14 14:57:50 rammjet-TH50 nemo-preview-st[46530]: libreoffice not found, and PackageKit failed to install it with error GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.PackageKit was not provided by any .service files

Is there some way to make the flatpak version of LibreOffice known to the system?

[Wanderer]

@rammjet

which allows previewing a document without opening the responsible app.

it seems this is wrong, if you would need the installed program for this. The alternative would be an additional(?) service showing the preview, like saved thumbnails, a bit like it is done on Windows.
.

@rammjet

Is there some way to make the flatpak version of LibreOffice known to the system?

Maybe. But mostly this is a question on flatpak. Additional questions would be privacy settings, wich may prevent preview.
.
You may try a newer installed version from TDF instead - this may be easier.

[rammjet]

@Wanderer

it seems this is wrong, if you would need the installed program for this. The alternative would be an additional(?) service showing the preview, like saved thumbnails, a bit like it is done on Windows.

I don’t know how it works behind the scenes. I was just hoping a quick symlink or something would tie things together. The preview concept comes from macOS Quicklook which uses a series of plugins to help with rendering or playing media. On Windows, there is a Quicklook work-alike called Seer that uses plugins. Based on my error message, nemo-preview needs to access some portion of the app package to make things work, and it can’t seem to find it when installed via flatpak.

@Wanderer

You may try a newer installed version from TDF instead - this may be easier.

Yeah, if I install from .deb, I have to establish some way to be informed about updates. If it is from the Mint repositories or from Flatpak, the updates will show up in Update Manager.

[Wanderer]

@rammjet

to establish some way to be informed about updates

Google for

LibreOffice Fresh PPA

[rammjet]

I’m going to mark this as solved. There still is no answer for Flatpak, but what I was ultimately trying to achieve has been solved: latest version of LibreOffice with nemo-preview working and a way to be informed of new updates.