How can I run LibreOffice Writer from the command line? Basically, what is its command and how do I get to know what's the command to run a particular application in general?
9 Answers
Run libreoffice --writer
to start LibreOffice Writer.
In this case, I guessed that it might be libreoffice
or similar, so I entered libre
in a terminal and pressed tab twice. libreoffice
was one of the options, so I ran that. It started something from which one could choose to go to Writer, Calc, Impress, etc. Since you asked specifically about Writer, I looked at man libreoffice
, which mentions -writer
as one of the command line options. Running libreoffice -writer
worked but resulted in
$ libreoffice -writer
Warning: -writer is deprecated. Use --writer instead.
And so I got to libreoffice --writer
.
In general, one could try things like the following:
- Guess and try names, based on the name of the application. Use Tab-completion for help. Read man pages for options.
- Run the program (using a GUI menu or however else you run it), guess the process name, and check using
ps aux | grep guessed_name
. - If you know that the program belongs to installed package
X
, rundpkg -L X
. It will list installed files from packageX
, look for/usr/bin
,/bin
,/sbin
, etc in the output. One can find out the process corresponding to a window as follows :
Run
xprop _NET_WM_PID
, navigate to the target window (without clicking!), and click on it. This will print the PID corresponding to the window, for example_NET_WM_PID(CARDINAL) = 7394
Now run
ps -p 7394
(with 7394 replaced by the PID you got) to find out the process name for the given PID.
-
2Great explanation of the common sense process you used to find the command ... even without Google!– SRDCJul 16, 2016 at 0:04
To find a command, try using command auto-complete:
type 'libre', then press ['Tab'], giving you:
libreoffice
then add ' --help', finally giving you:
libreoffice --help
This will give you ALL the possible options you might need ..
(snip)
LibreOffice 3.4 340m1(Build:402)
Usage: soffice [options] [documents...]
Options:
--minimized keep startup bitmap minimized.
--invisible no startup screen, no default document and no UI.
--norestore suppress restart/restore after fatal errors.
--quickstart starts the quickstart service
--nologo don't show startup screen.
:
--writer create new text document.
--calc create new spreadsheet document.
--draw create new drawing.
--impress create new presentation.
--base create new database.
:
-
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Don't agree. That approach involved guessing, and a change find of '-writer'. I described a more correct and generic method.– david6Nov 20, 2011 at 21:29
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Well, both involve guessing
libre
orlibreoffice
. Is--help
more generic or correct thanman
?– PrateekNov 21, 2011 at 4:46 -
The accepted answer is a list of generic strategies that might work in a range of situations. This actually answers the specific question that was asked. Jan 19, 2016 at 8:05
One very easy way which does not involve any guessing at all:
- Run
alacarte
(that's 'Main Menu' in the Gnome menu). - Follow these steps to find out an application's command name:
- Select the application.
- Click
Properties
. - Find the command name for the application in the field
Command
, in this example it isfile-roller
.
-
Voted up for not using guesswork! Also, I didn't know about alacarte. Jan 19, 2016 at 8:07
Usually all GUI applications have a launcher icon. Most of them are stored in /usr/share/applications
. These .desktop
files contain information about application name and their corresponding commands.
A quick hacky way to list all applications and commands is to use awk command:
awk '{FS = "=";if ($1=="Name") printf("%s => ",$2); if($1=="Exec") {printf("%s\n",$2);nextfile;}}' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop
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Great, we can just pipe this to grep and search for any application! Jul 27, 2015 at 7:39
When I access Writer I go into my terminal and type:
lowriter
This seems to work perfectly and can be repeated for Calc (localc); Draw (lodraw); Base (lobase); Impress (loimpress). You get the point.
The other wonderful terminal command I learned tonight is this:
firefox google.com
this will call up Firefox while taking you to the website of your choice or in this case Google. The more that I play around with the Command Line Interface (CLI) the more that I fall in love with all of the capabilities.
-
Please see if the use of
lowriter
is still correct. I tried it just now using 12.04 and with LibreOffice 3.5.4.2 and got this response:The program 'lowriter' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install libreoffice-writer
– user25656Jul 16, 2012 at 17:06 -
On Ubuntu 12.10 and the new libreoffice 4.0, after manual installation, the command is:
libreoffice4.0 --writer
all other commands, like previous answer, are given with the inclusion of 4.0 after libreoffice.
If I have no idea where a program is, or what it is called, and only have the link from the "start menu", I will create a desktop shortcut with right click -> add to desktop. Then I will open the shortcut in a text editor and look for the line starting with "Exec". So, for LibreOffice Calc, I see:
Exec=libreoffice --calc %U
This corresponds to the bash command "libreoffice --calc". The percent-sign has to do with an extended implicit (?) option for exec, which I don't understand but which can be ignored since you're not using Exec.
To start LibreOffice on an existing document, use xdg-open
. This not only works for LibreOffice documents but for any file or URL. xdg-open
will open the file using your preferred application.
xdg-open file-or-url
As I usually work from the terminal, my ~/.bash_aliases
has an alias o=xdg-open
, so it reduces to this:
o aDocument.odt
o https://askubuntu.com