fedora-dots/.local/state/noctalia/community-templates/libreoffice

LibreOffice

Tested against LibreOffice 26.2.4.2 (Flatpak, org.libreoffice.LibreOffice).

Why this ships as an extension, not a rendered config file

LibreOffice's main window chrome (menus, toolbars, buttons, dialogs) is drawn by its own widget framework, not read from gtk.css. Confirmed live: an unmistakable window { background-color: #ff0000; } override in ~/.var/app/org.libreoffice.LibreOffice/config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css had zero effect, even with the GTK3 VCL plugin explicitly forced (SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3). LibreOffice's real theming mechanism is its own ColorScheme system (Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Application Colors), distributed as an installable .oxt extension package, the same format real community themes like libre-nord use.

The property list is confirmed against LibreOffice's own source, not guessed

Every ColorScheme property name and its real meaning is confirmed against officecfg/registry/schema/org/openoffice/Office/UI.xcs in the LibreOffice/core repository, not a partial third-party example. This mattered in practice: FieldColor's own schema description is "Allows to overwrite the system field color", it controls input/dropdown widget backgrounds, not document-embedded field shading the way its name first suggests. An earlier pass mapped it to a literal document-shading color by analogy with a third-party reference theme, and dropdown boxes, the Options sidebar, and text fields stayed on a stock dark color as a result, exactly the kind of "confirmed working" that only turns out to be partially true once someone actually looks closely. Fixed by mapping FieldColor to a real Noctalia surface role, then cross-checking the entire property list against the schema (several other properties, DisabledColor, ActiveTextColor, InactiveColor, and their pairs, were missing from the theme entirely and are now set too).

Colors below are hex placeholders in the template source; Theme_Colors.xcu uses this schema's own decimal-integer format, not hex, so apply.sh converts every value at render time (plain int(hex, 16), confirmed against the Document Foundation's own blog post examples).

Document canvas and BASIC editor colors stay literal, deliberately

Same reasoning as darktable's neutral photo-viewing background: DocColor, FontColor, DocBoundaries, CalcGrid, and the BASIC IDE syntax-highlighting colors are kept as sensible literal light/dark values regardless of how dark the surrounding chrome is. A document is still meant to look like a normal page (or be printed), and code syntax highlighting needs distinguishable, conventional colors (keywords, strings, comments), not four or five UI accent roles stretched over a dozen token types. These are functional, not chrome.

Real gotchas found building this, not theoretical

• The scheme has to be selected manually, once. Installing the extension registers "Noctalia" as an available option in the Scheme dropdown, it does not auto-select it. Confirmed live: same behavior class as darktable's own theme dropdown. Go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Application Colors, pick "Noctalia" from the Scheme dropdown, click Apply/OK. After that one manual step, every later theme change re-renders and reinstalls the extension automatically through Noctalia's own template pipeline, no further manual selection needed.
• A restart is needed to see updated colors, same as Heroic's own documented limitation. Confirmed live: switching Noctalia's theme mode while LibreOffice was already open did not change the running window at all; closing and reopening it did. This is not a bug in the template, extensions are loaded at LibreOffice startup.
• unopkg add --force alone is not reliable for reinstalling the same extension identifier. Confirmed live, the hard way: after several reinstalls it left the extension in a broken state, unopkg list reported nothing installed at all, while a stale binary cache index (uno_packages/cache/uno_packages.pmap) still pointed at a deleted temp directory, causing every subsequent install attempt to fail with "file opening ... NOT_EXISTING" until the whole cache directory was cleared by hand. apply.sh now explicitly unopkg removes the extension identifier before every add, ignoring failure since it may not be installed yet, rather than relying on --force to handle that atomically.
• unopkg add while LibreOffice is running can corrupt the install the same way. apply.sh checks for a running soffice.bin process first and skips the install step entirely if found, rather than risk it, the .oxt is still rebuilt with the current colors either way, so the next render (once LibreOffice is closed) or the next manual re-apply installs them, and a restart is already required regardless.
• unopkg is not on the sandbox's PATH inside the Flatpak. Confirmed live: flatpak run --command=unopkg ... fails with "No such file or directory", the full path /app/libreoffice/program/unopkg is required.
• If LibreOffice was open at the exact moment the theme changed, the install-skip above has no automatic retry. The .oxt still gets rebuilt with the current colors every render, but since the install step is skipped while LibreOffice is running, closing LibreOffice alone is not enough, nothing re-triggers the install afterward on its own. Confirmed live: after changing the palette while LibreOffice was open, colors stayed stale even after closing and reopening it, until apply.sh was run again by hand with LibreOffice closed. In practice this means a color change made while LibreOffice happens to be open may need the theme re-applied once more (noctalia msg templates-apply) after closing it, not just a restart.

Native install

Same unopkg mechanism, invoked directly. apply.sh resolves unopkg from PATH first, then falls back to the official TDF install layout (/opt/libreoffice*/program/unopkg, /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/unopkg, /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/unopkg) so the official .deb/.rpm packages, which do not put unopkg on PATH, are detected too. If no native unopkg is found it falls back to the Flatpak flatpak run --command= form.

Verified live against LibreOffice 26.2.4.2 from the official TDF .deb packages on Kali Linux (amd64), including a clean-PATH run where command -v unopkg returned nothing and /opt/libreoffice26.2/program/unopkg was picked up by the fallback; the extension installed and registered correctly.

Flatpak install (org.libreoffice.LibreOffice)

Extension cache lives at ~/.var/app/org.libreoffice.LibreOffice/config/libreoffice/4/user/uno_packages/. No flatpak override needed.

Status

Verified live against LibreOffice 26.2.4.2 (Flatpak) through Noctalia's own real render pipeline, community_ids + local community-templates/libreoffice/, both dark and light mode, confirmed after a restart in each case. Native install path is implemented but not live-tested.