localwriter: A LibreOffice Writer extension for local generative AI

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About

This is a LibreOffice Writer extension that enables inline generative editing with local inference. It's compatible with language models supported by text-generation-webui and ollama.

Table of Contents

• About
• Table of Contents
• Features
  • Extend Selection
  • Edit Selection
• Setup
  • LibreOffice Extension Installation
  • Backend Setup
    • text-generation-webui
    • Ollama
• Settings
• Contributing
  • Local Development Setup
  • Building the Extension Package
• License

Features

This extension provides two powerful commands for LibreOffice Writer:

Extend Selection

Hotkey: CTRL + q

• This uses a language model to predict what comes after the selected text. There are a lot of ways to use this.
• Some example use cases for this include: writing a story or an email given a particular prompt, adding additional possible items to a grocery list, or summarizing the selected text.

Edit Selection

Hotkey: CTRL + e

• A dialog box appears to prompt the user for instructions about how to edit the selected text, then the selected text is replaced by the edited text.
• Some examples for use cases for this include changing the tone of an email, translating text to a different language, and semantically editing a scene in a story.

Setup

LibreOffice Extension Installation

1. Download the latest version of Localwriter via the releases page.
2. Open LibreOffice.
3. Navigate to Tools > Extensions.
4. Click Add and select the downloaded .oxt file.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the extension.

Backend Setup

To use Localwriter, you need a backend model runner. Options include text-generation-webui and Ollama. Choose the backend that best suits your needs. Ollama is generally easier to set up. In either of these options, you will have to download and set a model.

text-generation-webui

• Installation instructions can be found here.
• Docker image available here.

After installation and model setup:

1. Enable the local OpenAI API (this ensures the API responds in a format similar to OpenAI).
2. Verify that the intended model is working (e.g., openchat3.5, suitable for 8GB VRAM setups).
3. Set the endpoint in Localwriter to localhost:5000 (or the configured port).

Ollama

• Installation instructions are available here.
• Download and use a model (gemma3 isn't bad)
• Ensure the API is enabled.
• Set the endpoint in Localwriter to localhost:11434 (or the configured port).
• Manually set the model name. (This is required for Ollama to work)

Settings

In the settings, you can configure:

• Maximum number of additional tokens for "Extend Selection."
• Maximum number of additional tokens (above the number of letters in the original selection) for "Edit Selection."
• Custom "system prompts" for both "Extend Selection" and "Edit Selection." These prompts are prepended to the selection before sending it to the language model. For example, you can use a sample of your writing to guide the model's style.

Contributing

Help with development is always welcome. localwriter has a number of outstanding feature requests by users. Feel free to work on any of them, and you can help improve freedom-respecting local AI.

Local Development Setup

For developers who want to modify or contribute to Localwriter, you can run and test the extension directly from your source code without packaging it into an .oxt file. This allows for quick iteration and seeing changes reflected in the LibreOffice UI.

1. Clone the Repository (if not already done):

   • Clone the Localwriter repository to your local machine if you haven't already:

     git clone https://github.com/balis-john/localwriter.git
     cd localwriter
     

2. Register the Extension Temporarily:

   • Use the unopkg tool to register the extension directly from your repository folder. This avoids the need to package the extension as an .oxt file during development.
   • Run the following command, replacing /path/to/localwriter/ with the path to your cloned repository:

     unopkg add /path/to/localwriter/
     

   • On Linux, unopkg is often located at /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/unopkg. Adjust the command if needed:

     /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/unopkg add /path/to/localwriter/
     

3. Restart LibreOffice:

   • Close and reopen LibreOffice Writer or Calc. You should see the "localwriter" menu with options like "Extend Selection", "Edit Selection", and "Settings" in the menu bar.

4. Make and Test Changes:

   • Edit the source files (e.g., main.py) directly in your repository folder using your preferred editor.
   • After making changes, restart LibreOffice to reload the updated code. Test the functionality and UI elements (dialogs, menu actions) directly in LibreOffice.
   • Note: Restarting is often necessary for Python script changes to take effect, as LibreOffice caches modules.

5. Commit Changes to Git:

   • Since you're working directly in your Git repository, commit your changes as needed:

     git add main.py
     git commit -m "Updated extension logic for ExtendSelection"
     

6. Unregister the Extension (Optional):

   • If you need to remove the temporary registration, use:

     unopkg remove org.extension.sample
     

   • Replace org.extension.sample with the identifier from description.xml if different.

Building the Extension Package

To create a distributable .oxt package:

In a terminal, change directory into the localwriter repository top-level directory, then run the following command:

zip -r localwriter.oxt \
  Accelerators.xcu \
  Addons.xcu \
  assets \
  description.xml \
  main.py \
  META-INF \
  registration \
  README.md

This will create the file localwriter.oxt which you can open with libreoffice to install the localwriter extension. You can also change the file extension to .zip and manually unzip the extension file, if you want to inspect a localwriter .oxt file yourself. It is all human-readable, since python is an interpreted language.

License

(See License.txt for the full license text)

Except where otherwise noted in source code, this software is provided with a MPL 2.0 license.

The code not released with an MPL2.0 license is released under the following terms. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, License: The Document Foundation https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A large amount of code is derived from the following MPL2.0 licensed code from the Document Foundation https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/159938

MPL2.0

Copyright (c) 2024 John Balis