GitHub - clark-labs-inc/libreoffice-rs: LibreOffice CLI in Rust

libreoffice-rs — Pure Rust Office Document Toolkit (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODF, PDF)

Pure-Rust, std-only library and CLI for reading, writing, converting, and rendering office documents — DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG, ODF, ODB, PDF, HTML, SVG, Markdown, CSV, and plain text — with no C/C++ shims, no FFI, no LibreOffice install, and zero non-std dependencies.

Quick start

cargo install libreoffice-pure

# Convert DOCX to PDF — no soffice, no Java, no system deps
libreoffice-pure --headless --convert-to pdf report.docx

# Spreadsheet to CSV
libreoffice-pure --headless --convert-to csv spreadsheet.xlsx

# PPTX to PDF
libreoffice-pure --headless --convert-to pdf slides.pptx

# Markdown to DOCX
libreoffice-pure convert --to docx notes.md notes.docx

# Extract text from DOCX/PPTX/XLSX as Markdown
libreoffice-pure docx-to-md report.docx report.md
libreoffice-pure pptx-to-md slides.pptx slides.md
libreoffice-pure xlsx-to-md sheet.xlsx sheet.md

# Render pages as images
libreoffice-pure docx-to-pngs report.docx pages/ --dpi 144
libreoffice-pure pptx-to-jpegs slides.pptx slides/ --dpi 150 --quality 85

The --headless --convert-to interface mirrors soffice — drop it into existing scripts as a faster, dependency-free replacement.

• No LibreOffice install required. Convert DOCX → PDF, XLSX → CSV, PPTX → Markdown, and more directly from Rust.
• Pure Rust, std only. Compiles with cargo build on a stock toolchain. Drop-in for WASM, serverless, sandboxes, and minimal containers.
• Fast. 10–187× faster than real LibreOffice across the full N×M conversion matrix (mean ~116× across 63 head-to-head pairs). See benchmarks.
• Honest. This is not a full replacement for LibreOffice. See project status.

Project status

This is not feature-parity with LibreOffice. LibreOffice is a massive decades-old suite with deep compatibility, UI toolkits, printing, macros, scripting, and more. This codebase provides a coherent Rust architecture and meaningful real functionality — every crate is pure Rust/std-only, the spreadsheet engine evaluates non-trivial formulas, and the CLI creates actual ODF/OOXML archives — but it does not fully replace LibreOffice. See STATUS.md for the candid feature matrix.

Benchmarks

Tested against LibreOffice 26.2.2 on macOS (Apple Silicon). All generated documents validated by soffice --headless.

N×M Conversion Matrix (111 format pairs)

tests/matrix_speed_comparison.py runs every supported (from → to) pair through both engines on the same inputs:

Head-to-head (n = 63): libreoffice-rs 14 ms vs LibreOffice 816 ms — mean 115.8×. Realistic fixtures land in the 10–80× band; small synthetic inputs reach 100–180× because LibreOffice's ~700 ms startup dominates. libreoffice-rs also handles 35 pairs whose formats soffice --convert-to cannot produce at all (Markdown, MathML, ODF-Math, ODB).

Full table: benchmark_evidence/matrix_speed_comparison.md

Real-world Quality (13 public fixtures)

tests/quality_benchmark.sh downloads public DOCX/PPTX/XLSX files from python-openxml, python-pptx, PHPOffice and Calibre, then scores both engines:

• 51× faster mean wall-clock (18 ms vs 902 ms)
• 99.1% mean PDF text Jaccard on DOCX (5/7 files at 100%)
• 100% CSV cell Jaccard on XLSX (3/3)
• 90.9% Markdown extraction Jaccard across all 13 files
• PDF page count exact match on 9/10 files

Details: docs/quality_benchmark_results.txt

Test suite

258 tests pass across 5 test suites (cargo test --workspace, integration, benchmarks). 88/88 benchmark assertions cover Writer features (bold, italic, headings, tables, links, lists), Calc features (16 formula functions, CSV round-trips), cross-format compatibility (11 conversion paths validated by real LibreOffice), multilingual support (English, Chinese, Spanish), and edge cases (empty docs, Unicode, 5K-row spreadsheets).

CLI reference

# Format conversions (soffice-compatible interface)
libreoffice-pure --headless --convert-to pdf report.docx
libreoffice-pure convert --from ods --to xlsx sheet.ods sheet.xlsx

# Per-module commands
libreoffice-pure writer new out.odt --title "Hello" --text "Hello from Rust"
libreoffice-pure writer markdown-to-odt notes.md notes.odt
libreoffice-pure writer convert notes.md notes.pdf
libreoffice-pure calc csv-to-ods sheet.csv sheet.ods --sheet Data --has-header
libreoffice-pure calc eval "=SUM(B2:B4)" --csv numbers.csv --has-header
libreoffice-pure impress demo deck.odp
libreoffice-pure draw demo diagram.odg
libreoffice-pure math latex-to-odf formula.txt formula.odf
libreoffice-pure base csv-to-odb table.csv People out.odb

# Raster + Markdown extraction
libreoffice-pure docx-to-pngs report.docx pages/ --dpi 144
libreoffice-pure pptx-to-jpegs slides.pptx slides/ --dpi 150 --quality 85
libreoffice-pure docx-to-md report.docx report.md
libreoffice-pure xlsx-recalc-check sheet.xlsx

# End-to-end demos
libreoffice-pure office-demo ./demo_out
libreoffice-pure desktop-demo ./demo_profile

Crate architecture

FAQ

Does libreoffice-rs require LibreOffice to be installed? No. It parses, writes, and converts DOCX/XLSX/PPTX/ODF/PDF files directly in pure Rust. LibreOffice only appears in benchmarks and integration tests as a reference.

Can I use it as a library? Yes. Every crate is on crates.io. The libreoffice_pure::convert_bytes / convert_path_bytes API provides format-auto-detecting conversion. Per-domain crates (lo_writer, lo_calc, etc.) give fine-grained control.

Does it work with WASM / serverless / containers? Yes. Pure Rust, std-only, no build.rs / FFI / system libraries.

Agent skill

An Agent Skill bundle lives in skills/libreoffice-rs/. Drop it into your agent's skills path and it will know how to drive libreoffice-pure for document conversion, rendering, and extraction.

Citation

Citation authorship: Stanislav Kirdey, Clark Labs Inc. See CITATION.cff for machine-readable citation metadata.

Maintainer

Built by Stanislav Kirdey, Clark Labs Inc. — makers of Clark Agent, an AI agent for websites, research, and automation.

See CHANGELOG.md for per-version details.