This page will be updated periodically as we test various releases of OpenOffice and LibreOffice on various Linux releases.

We have guidance related to the release of the office suite that should be used when creating and modifying templates, and the release of the office suite that can be used on the print server.

Office for creating and modifying templates

8/11/2021: We recommend OpenOffice release 4.1.8.  We DO NOT recommend later releases of Open Office or any Libre Office suite. While we generally prefer LibreOffice and recommend it for use on the print server, we have encountered issues when using LibreOffice to create and/or modify templates.  The root cause seems to be a bug in LibreOffice that causes extraneous <span> tags to be inserted into critical areas of the template.  These extraneous <span> tags interfere with the templating engine's ability to parse the internals of the template when inserting the dynamic data from the MultiValue host.   We will continue to test new releases of both Open Office and LibreOffice and will update this document with its recommendations as new versions are tested.

Office for the print server

8/11/2021: We recommend LibreOffice 6.4.7.2 for the print server.  We do not recommend OpenOffice of any version for the print server.  We have found several issues with OpenOffice when used in headless mode on the print server whereby the OpenOffice process will stall and hang. There does not seem to be much information on the OpenOffice forums about what might be happening.  LibreOffice seems to be very stable in headless mode and so we will recommend LibreOffice on the print server.

Caution: Do not summon LibreOffice on the print server and and use it to modify templates.  Use OpenOffice at the version recommended above.  This guidance may change as we test newer releases of both product suites and determine that the two projects have resolved the issues we have encountered.