Libreoffice offline help not work with firefox snap

English
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#1

Suddenly libreoffice started opening the internal help pages, the ones callable from the menu function dialogboxes, as XML files.
In fact, they are opened to me in gEdit (I work under ubuntu) and no longer as HTML pages.
Basically, when I try to open the help, a file like this appears in the gedit editor

<!DOCTYPE HTML><html lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8"><noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url='file:///opt/libreoffice7.5/program/../help/it/noscript.html'">
</noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url='file:///opt/libreoffice7.5/program/../help/index.html?Target=scalc/.uno%3AHelpIndex&Language=it&System=UNIX&Version=7.5'">
<script type="text/javascript"> window.location.href = "file:///opt/libreoffice7.5/program/../help/index.html?Target=scalc/.uno%3AHelpIndex&Language=it&System=UNIX&Version=7.5";</script>
<title>Help Page Redirection</title>
</head>
<body>
</body><
/html>

I don’t know if I accidentally changed some application options while trying to solve a configuration problem
Do you have any ideas on how to return to the initial state without resetting the profile?

(LO:7.5.1.2 - Ubuntu 22.04)

Help in LibreOffice not functioning
#2

No this is a regular html-file, telling a browser where to find the actual help file on disk.
.
Usually LibreOffice calls the default browser of your OS. So start analysing:

  • how is LibreOffice installed? Can it see the path to the help-files. Often Flatpaks are restricted here.
  • Wich is your default browser? I read of one guy who replaced Chrome with Firefox to make this working, but do not remember the distribution.
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#3

You (or your system) probably changed the default handler how HTML files are opened. I slightly remember that Ubuntu had the weird idea to open HTML in an editor instead of the browser.

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#4

In the meantime, thanks to all for the replies.
I don’t know how to reply quoting both answers, so I’m quoting only the last one but I’ll answer both
In fact, for inexplicable reasons, I just saw that by default Ubuntu opened my html files with the editor and not with firefox, the only browser installed (and by default) with Ubuntu
I then restored the opening of html files with the browser and not with the editor
The help files are located (Libreoffice 7.5.1.2 canonical) from the directory /opt/libreoffice7.5/help
If I open them individually with open file from firefox, accessing the directories directly, they open, but without the css, javascript
If I try to open them from libreoffice (for example with the help> guide menu it doesn’t find them (message: impossible to find /tmp/lu91931xx8j.tmp/NewHelp14.html)
I can assume that there is a permission problem, but I’m sure I never changed them
However I seem to recall that the internal help was open within libreoffice, not the browser

#5

I think here Can't get Offline Help to Work with Firefox - #2 by Villeroy there is a possible answer, but I have to study it well.
My version of firefox is the default operating system

Firefox 111.0.1 (64-bit)
Mozilla Firefox Snap for Ubuntu
canonical-002 - 1.0

The Libreoffice that I installed I downloaded it directly (.deb file) from the main site, uninstalling the version that comes with Ubuntu 22.04 and it’s the canonical version (the snap has some problems

However, if I remember correctly, up until a few days ago, I could see the offline help without problems, and I don’t remember touching anything since then

#6

Even if I can’t be absolutely certain, the problem seems to be inherent to firefox snap and to the characteristic of snap applications that each work in its own sandbox and therefore each with its own tmp folder.
The issue is known and quite debated in the last year, I shouldn’t be the only one in this situation

A first solution seems to be trivially trying to install firefox in the .deb version, which is possible but quite complicated as you can read here How to Remove Firefox Snap & Switch Back Classic Deb in Ubuntu 22.04 | 22.10 - FOSTips and in any case it is not said that this possibility will be supported in the future

The second option is to change firefox snap’s /tmp folder to a different one, someone with firefox managed to move it to /var/tmp by changing a system variable
But I don’t find a detailed working solution understandable

The fact remains that, from memory, in the first few days of using this recent installation of LO it seems to me that the online help worked

Both options are not immediate for someone like me, essentially a user and not a system administrator, who is very cautious in getting his hands on the operating system.

#7

The problem is really related to the use of the snap version of firefox.
I installed opera from its .deb as my default browser, and now every libreoffice help item opens in the opera browser
I will evaluate in the next few days whether to reinstall firefox using the relative .deb replacing it with the snap version pre-installed with ubuntu 22.04

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