by Colin Charles, drbyte@openoffice.org
And all the kind contributions of the OpenOffice.org community, especially those on the mailing lists; without all those invaluable questions and answers, this FAQ would not exist.
Latest version of this FAQ is always at http://www.bytebot.net/openoffice/faq.html
FAQ Revised: Saturday 04 October 2003 02:25:44
unicows.dll?apt-get packaging system?One of the freedoms provided is that one can take OpenOffice.org and package it as his/her own distribution. Then, this distribution can be sold to make a revenue. Such a distribution is StarOffice, from Sun Microsystems.
Therefore, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice have exactly the same core applications, except that it misses out on certain fonts (like Asian language ones and a few for improved Microsoft file format compatibility), a database component (AdabasD), certain file filters, templates & a clip art gallery, and some sorting functionality. However, most of what OpenOffice.org lacks can be made up with the help of third-party applications.
OpenOffice.org has a nearly full-featured Gallery (it's
getting there since the 1.1Beta2 release), and Impress has started
including two templates in that release as well. The official documentation has a useful list.
This means that OpenOffice.org is free for use, even if it
were commercial usage. Redistributing OpenOffice.org is also allowed
under the licensing scheme. More details with regards to the license
are available at the Licensing FAQ at the OpenOffice.org website.
It is also interesting to note that Red Hat Linux, Mandrake Linux, and SuSe
distribute OpenOffice.org with their Linux distributions. Mandrake Club
(Silver Membership), even provides a copy of StarOffice as an
alternative product.
There are websites out there that act as resources to all OpenOffice.org users:
If you find any more useful resources or links, please drop them
down the maintainers way - e-mail address is at the start of this
document.
Development on groupware software that will make it more Microsoft Office like, is under development, with regards to the Glow project. An interim solution till Glow arrives is the integration with Mozilla Mail.
Note: You cannot add OpenOffice.org files natively. They must be added as "binary" files. This is a temporary problem.
Hints: Reduce the size of your file as much as possible. And, if
you are uploading an HTML document, be sure to compress it first (Zip
or tar it), otherwise it gets corrupted when others try to download it.
Do note that there is no Mac OS X installation instructions, or help
with regards to package management on the different Linux distributions.
jvmsetup will do the trick.
If you have downloaded the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and choose
to upgrade to using the Software Development Kit (SDK), runing jvmsetup again to point to the "new" version of Java is what you need to do.
It has been known that some versions of Java do not necessarily
work with Linux, especially some from the Blackdown archives (for
Debian users). It is probably wise to keep up with what Sun
distributes, and get it from the Sun website.
unicows.dll?By installing at least 1.1 RC2 however, unicows.dll is not
needed anymore, even if you run Windows 95/98. This compatibility layer
is only needed for legacy 1.0.x releases. So it's time to upgrade!.
Now, in the Applications folder, there will be an
OpenOffice.org1.0.3 folder. Double click on the "Start OpenOffice.org"
icon. When prompted, select X11 as the favourite window manager.
Patience is a virtue here, as the more RAM you have, the quicker the
start-up goes; it takes a while otherwise. Once this is done, the
Writer should be opened and OOo 1.0.3 is then correctly installed.
Usage of a command like urpmi (on Mandrake) or rpm -ivh (on Red Hat) will solve most problems. urpmi resolves dependencies, however the rpm command is a little different.
apt-get packaging system?apt-get. Adding a new apt repository in your /etc/apt/sources.list is what needs to be done, and there is an excellent OpenOffice.org in Debian site for help out there; after-which you can just perform an apt-get install openoffice. This method resolves dependencies.pkg_add can act on. It is as simple as pkg_add <packagename>.
However, within the FreeBSD ports collection, OpenOffice.org exists too. Visting /usr/ports/editors/openoffice or /usr/ports/editors/openoffice-devel will show you the ports that are required. To learn more about the ports system, man ports works well. Remember, that using the ports way of installing OpenOffice also resolves dependencies.
For bleeding edge FreeBSD stuff, the OpenOffice.org Source Project: FreeBSD Porting Team has some great downloads.
/net switch (so it's ./setup /net), all users on the system will have access to the OpenOffice.org package. By default, it asks to be installed in the /opt directory.N:\OpenOffice\program\setup.exe -r:N:\OpenOffice\response.txt
[Environment]
InstallationMode=INSTALL_NORMAL
InstallationType=STANDARD
DestinationPath=C:\Program Files\OpenOffice
StartProcedure=MyStartProc
Migration=Yes
[Java]
JavaSupport=preinstalled_or_none
[Procedures]
Sub MyStartProc
SetUserCompanyName("None")
HideSetupEnd Sub
[Windows_Desktop_Integration]
Register4MSWord=True
Register4MSExcel=True
Register4MSPowerPoint=True
RegisterAsDefaultHTMLEditor=True
Apparently, Sun for its StarOffice package provides some fairly good documentation
in PDF files with regards to silent installs. Another good resource is
the section within the user installation documentation entitled Windows in a Multiple User Environment.
sofficerc file, which is located in your install directory, under program/sofficerc. So look in the $OO_INSTALL_PATH/program/sofficerc, and when it says Set Logo = 1, change that to Set Logo = 0. This now means the splash screen will be disabled the next time you start OpenOffice.org.
In Windows, its also located in the program folder, and you're looking for a soffice.ini file (plain ASCII text). The changes are the same as above.
If given a LaTeX file, and there is a need to edit it in OOo Writer, the usage of LaTeX2rtf may come in handy.
Format -> Page
brings up the "Page Style" pop-up. Here, in the Page tab, you can change
the Orientation from Portrait to Landscape, and vice versa. Control of
the page format applies here (US Letter, A4, A3, etc...), as does page
margin settings.Insert -> Graphics -> Scan; as long as you have a working scanner with TWAIN support, you're fine.
In Linux however, there is no direct scanner support. The source
can't be detected, so a workaround is to scan an image via The GIMP and
then import the image via Insert -> Graphics -> From File. However, if you're willing to get your hands dirty, as the root user on Linux, perform ln -s /usr/lib/libsane.so.1 /usr/local/lib/libsane.so
and the scanner will start working! (What that does is that it makes a
soft-link called libsane.so; if your libsane.so.1 isn't located in
/usr/lib, just execute a "locate libsane" for instance to find it).
Tools -> Options, and then go to the Load/Save -> General
tab. Tick the "AutoSave every" option and enter a time. Here you have
the choice to also tick the "Always create backup copy" option.File ->AutoPilot -> Document Converter. This can convert directories worth of, for example, Word documents to Writer documents. And its automated as well!Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org -> Fonts,
check the "Apply replacement table" option, and in the "Font" box, type
"Andale Sans UI", and in the "Replace with" drop-down, select the
desired font. This will replace the default Andale Sans UI with
something more smoother.File -> Export as PDF, you're given options as to what quality you would like the PDF to be in:
spadmin
utility, located in your OpenOffice.org directory. Running this utility
gives you a pop-up, with an option to click "Fonts" and add it. If you don't want the fonts copied from their directory, you can
tick the option to "Create soft links only". This makes a "short-cut"
and allows OpenOffice.org to know about the new fonts.
File -> Properties -> Statistics.Format -> Stylist)
has what is referred to as a "Fill Format Mode". It however relies on a
pre-existing Style, and can't pick up ad-hoc formatting. To make use of
the Stylist, select a Style, click the "Fill Format Mode" icon, and
click the text you want to change the style for. Select Insert -> Fields -> Other
This will only work in OpenOffice.org 1.1, which is the current release.
=CONCATENATE(B1;"myparty.jpg"). Now, apply this to the entire column, and you'll have "DCP_5509myparty.jpg" and the like.To save it, you Save As a "Text CSV", and when asked for a Field Delimiter, select {Tab}, instead of ",".
Insert -> Note
is what is used. But to view it just upon hovering over the cell,
instead of having to right-click on the cell and select "Show Note",
you need to enable the Tips selection. Do this by clicking on Help -> Tips.
As long as the tick is displayed next to Tips, Notes for cells will
always be displayed when the mouse hovers over the said cell.Format -> Cells), go to the Alignment tab, and under Properties, tick Automatic line break. After hitting the OK button, the contents of the cell would be wrapped to fit it.File -> Print -> Options and then ticking the Print only selected sheets for Document. To make the change permanent for all occurances of OOo Calc, go to Tools -> Options -> Spreadsheet -> Print and select the same option: Print only selected sheets for Document.View -> Master -> Handout. When you're there, choose Format -> Modify Layout.File -> Export and at the
File Format option, choose "Macromedia Flash (SWF)". You can now play
the presentation in your web browser or upload it for others to see.View -> Master -> Handout is setup as you want it to be. Now you need to add the PDF Converter as a "printer" in spadmin. For this to work, GhostScript must be installed (works well in Linux).
Now, once the Printer is setup (and titled PDF Converter), you can
print the Impress document to the PDF Converter, and instead of
printing slides, just print the Handout (get that from the Options
menu). This will print to a PDF file, a "handout" view of your
presentation.
File -> AutoPilot -> Address Data Source), Evolution appears as a new type in addition to what is currently already there.
#!/bin/sh
for i in *.doc *.sxw
do
soffice -pt "printername" $i
done
The printername is what you set as the default printer for OOo. Executing that shell script, prints all .doc and .sxw files to the printer.
soffice.bin -quickstart -plugin
Keep in mind that soffice.bin is located in /home/username/.openoffice.
A tool for those running the Linux version of OpenOffice.org that would come in handy is the OpenOffice.org Unix Dictionary Installer. This a front-end GTK+ application that makes the installation task so much easier for the end-user.
./soffice -help. This will display options that you could pass it, so that different things happen. This works with the 1.1 Beta onwards.
It is also notable that in the OpenOffice.org directory, under the program folder, you can run various sh scripts that are titled like scalc (for Calc), smath (for Math), and the like. These are pre-scripted commands, as above.
A lot of people have helped make this project what it's worth. Some make a few contributions and they end up in the changelog. Others however made (or still make) a large impact on this entire FAQ. They are:
Released under the Public Documentation License.
Copyright © 2003 Colin Charles byte@aeon.com.my & Sun Microsystems ® under the Joint Copyright Agreement.