External editor in Libre-Office

Question

In Libre-Office, is it possible to edit a selection with an external editor, such as Vim or Emacs?

To write this, I call Vim from Qutebrowser, i.e. mark the window and press ctrl+e. That opens an instance of Vim with whatever was in the window. When I close the buffer, its new contents are put into the window in Qutebrowser. Something similar in Libre-Office would help.

I ask, not because I want to use Libre-Office, but because I have to collaborate with someone who uses Word.

PS. Ideally, italics should be converted to something that can be edited in plain text, such as \it{this}.

Answer 1

Use the following Python macro. Go to Tools -> Customize to run it at the press of a keystroke.

import os
import tempfile
import uno

def edit_with_vim():
    doc = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument()
    oVC = doc.getCurrentController().getViewCursor()
    data = oVC.getString()
    encoded_data = data.encode("utf8")
    fileTemp = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete = False)
    fileTemp.write(encoded_data)
    fileTemp.close()
    os.system('gvim -c "set encoding=utf8" %s' % (fileTemp.name))

g_exportedScripts = edit_with_vim,

EDIT:

After browsing the link above, see https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=12882 for a tutorial on customizing a key command to run the macro.

EDIT 2:

This code sends changes back to Writer.

import io
import os
from subprocess import call
import sys
import tempfile
import uno

def edit_with_vim():
    doc = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument()
    oVC = doc.getCurrentController().getViewCursor()
    textstring = oVC.getString()
    text_bytes = textstring.encode("utf8")
    tf = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete = False)
    tempfilename = tf.name
    tf.write(text_bytes)
    tf.close()
    if os.name == 'nt':
        GVIM = "C:/Windows/gvim.bat"
    else:
        GVIM = "/usr/bin/gvim"
    call([
        GVIM, "-f",
        "-c", '"set encoding=utf8"',
        tempfilename])
    with io.open(tempfilename, 'r+b') as fh:
        fh.seek(0)
        edited_bytes = fh.read()
    os.unlink(tempfilename)
    edited_string = edited_bytes.decode("utf8")
    edited_string = edited_string.strip()
    oVC.setString(edited_string)

g_exportedScripts = edit_with_vim,