Missing thumnails on OpenDocument files - add libgsf-bin to default install?

This is not simply a matter of enabling a latent but inactive feature in Nautilus, but there is existing python code (link is in the description) that could possibly be made an extension to Nautilus, or else ported as a simple patch. This would improve usability nicely, and if it turns out to be easy to fix, would be a good paper cut.

There is already a package in the archive ooo-thumbnailer that just needs to be polished up and made part of the default install.

Note that it was thought that python was too heavy-weight to be used for thumbnailing so the package was converted to a shell script. There is of course still room for improvement and whoever wants to tackle this bug feel free to make changes however you wish. The ooo-thumbnailer package also originated from the Ubuntu Forums.

Surely this is entirely a non-issue... Since simply installing libgsf-gnome automatically provides thumbnails of ODF, and M$ documents....

Just install libgsf-gnome by default?

Kind Regards,
Matthew

Ah, I didn't know about libgsf-gnome, that sounds like it would be useful since it does both.

Chris

I wanted the same feature some time ago, and after extensive searching; this came up. I am surprised it is not more widely publicised. ^^. (So your lack of awareness is not to your discredit.)

Take care,
Matthew

Another solution to generate OpenDocument's thumbnails seems to be to install these 2 packages libgsf-bin imagemagick and to restart user's session...

I didn't know about libgsf either. It's great to hear that it seems to be as easy as including a package.

If it causes no new problems, it would be great to see this in the default install.

I also use libgsf with debian lenny and ubuntu jaunty to have open document previews and m$ office previews, and it works pretty well.

Could we add this package by default ? We just need the package libgsf-bin. Its compressed size is 71,8kB in the jaunty repository and all its dependencies are already installed by default.

It is not yet installed by default in karmic beta :(

I just installed libgsf-bin and noticed that nautilus now shows thumbnails for *text* documents. But spreadsheets like *.xls and *.ods are not covered by this.
I'd say better textfiles than no files, but just textfiles would not close this bug for me, so I think it's not sufficient to make libgsf-bin a default package.

Not a paper cut, as it involves adding a package to the default install.

Really? I thought this WAS a small niggling little feature that takes almost zero effort to fix (adding a tiny package to the default install), but has very real user interface improvement. Ah well.