Comment 3 for bug 1766192

Hello!

Ubuntu 18.04
libreoffice build ID: libreoffice-6.0.4.2-snap1

I find it weird that opening

* /home/<user>/.hidden/Document.odt DOES NOT WORK (access denied)
* /home/<user>/Documents/.hidden/Document.odt WORKS
* /home/<user>/myfolder/.hidden/Document.odt WORKS

Opening

* /home/<user>/.Hidden.odt DOES NOT WORK (access denied)

Opening

* /home/<user>/Document.odt DOES NOT WORK

 (LibreOffice complains that it can't create a lock file (which is a hidden file), and opens the document only read only)

Opening (non-hidden) documents directly in the home directory is intended to only work read-only?

Seems that accessing hidden files in the first level inside the home directory is denied.
The "home" interface for snaps doesn't allow reading/writing files to .dot directories directly under $HOME. This is to mitigate access to sensitive information. See https://docs.snapcraft.io/reference/interfaces.

We have several applications which access documents under /home/<user>/.hidden which now does not work any more. Of course I could move all the documents to /home/<user>/Documents/.hidden, but this would require all applications to be adjusted for that.

We also have libreoffice extensions which require accessing files in the .hidden directory.
If I move them to the documents directory I have to find out the path of it e.g. via "xdg-user-dir DOCUMENTS", but will that work inside the libreoffice extension with limited access?
I could create a directory with a known name directly in the home directory and put all the files into it, but this could confuse users if there is a directory which contains only a hidden directory.
Unhiding our .hidden directory could also confuse users as we store internal data there.

Any suggestions?

Regards,
Dominik