https://github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.core is a simple OpenDocument viewer for phones and the like where HTML webview gadgets are standard fare. It’s written in C++ and could be foundational to making something native that fulfills the same purpose as LibreOffice but using Haiku APIs instead of Qt.
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It’s a long way from a document parsing library to a full blown office suite. If you want to get rid of the QT (and KDE) requirements of LibreOffice on Haiku the better way would probably be to write a native Haiku API GUI backend for LibreOffice.
As for the translator mentioned in the title: From my understanding, a translator converts from a standard format to a Haiku native one (eg jpeg to BBitmap). That means we would need something like a BTextDocument or a BSpreadsheet. Isn’t it easier to just use the open document format?
I think something got lost in the translation. I posted this in “native” because some people in this website have fetishes regarding the avoidance of ports. I have few problems with using ports, myself.
If somebody wants to bust their chops on remaking GoBe Productive or something just to prove a point, it wouldn’t be me. A translator is used to give global file format access to any application for a particular class of file formats.
Note: Adding an OpenDocument translator would allow owners of GoBe Productive to view and potentially, edit LibreOffice files from within GoBe Productive!
LibreOffice? That’s aiming a bit high. 
LibreOffice’s ability to read and write ancient file formats is legendary. I’ve used it to load old DOC files that MS-Word didn’t even recognise any more.
Yes, but the app itself has to access that facility first.
Haiku still ships with an RTF translator, and AFAIK nothing uses it. There was an experimental version of StyledEdit that could save to RTF, just before Be, Inc went under IIRC. I don’t think it could load RTF back in. Getting that functionality back into StyledEdit would be the way to go (not that I have any idea how to do it!). Then one could think of creating ODT and DOCX translators. A similar process for Sum-It, and some way to move extended attributes into SQL files, and you’d have the raw beginnings of an office suite. The next step would be a scripting language (Lua?) so you could for, example, mail-merge data from People files into StyledEdit. Sorry, just thinking aloud.
Yes, and that would be great if we had the GBP code and a 64-bit HPKG in the repos. I don’t see anyone putting in work to benefit a handful of still-legal owners and an unknown number of pirated copies.
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Re:Lua scripting
I submitted a patch to Luau a while back to make it work on Haiku beta 5. It is about as fast as LuaJIT but doesn’t require inline assembly in code generation due to clever usage of C++20. My patch just replaced a Linux-specific behavior with something more POSIX compliant. I upstreamed the patch so no maintenance is required for me and I’d recommend steering clear of mainline Lua. It has compatibility breakage quite frequently. Luau, as a fork, is used by the Roblox game engine so it is an attractive alternative, IMHO.
Re:Translators
Modularity is one of the things I liked better about Haiku/BeOS and the earlier Amiga-likes. If maintainability could be applied to such systems, harvesting additional file importing data from the LibreOffice codebase would be an option.
I remember testing that translator way back when… it made it possible to use StyledEdit to open RTF files.
(bit later) Just tested it with some very old .rtf files… Was able to just double click on them and get them open in StyledEdit (with formatting mostly preserved).
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That hadn’t occurred to me. I was a bit fixated on exporting rtf from Stylededit. Great to hear there some life in it yet!
There was a native gui for libreoffice a while ago (done by KapiX I think?). He did a talk about it at FOSDEM with a demo. But there is pretty much no advantage compared to using the Qt one. The code is probably still available somewhere.
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Indeed, it’s still there GitHub - KapiX/libreoffice_core: Read-only LibreOffice core repo - no pull request
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