OpenOffice suite
24 October 2004

Summary

OpenOffice is now in Debian and works fine. It is being ported to QT widgets -- should be in version 2.0.

Prelinking speeds up loading: "If you update the libraries used by OpenOffice.org (listed in /usr/share/doc/openoffice.org-bin/used_libs) in the future, you need to prelink again."

Guides

Tips

No header on the first page

  • Place the cursor on page 1.
  • Go to Format > Styles> Catalog.
  • In the dialog box, the topmost item is a drop-down list. Select Page Styles.
  • From the resulting list on the right side of the dialog box, select First Page.
  • The header on page 1 should now disappear, but it should remain visible on all subsequent pages.

unzip should also work on .sxw files, and there are sxw to html scripts. Put this information with the list of file converters.

Word count for marked text, various useful macros

Open oowriter, file open, http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/bugs/installer_acb.sxw

Redefine printers

Redefine OpenOffice printers (from steen@sigillo, using run command):

ssh clit sudo dchroot -c ia32 -d /usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin

To import templates from PowerPoint

Powerpoint uses *.pot files for powerpoint templates; copy them from the Windows directory to a location where they can be reached by ooimpress (I moved them to /vm/softwinware/Office). Read each file into ooimpress and save as a template.

OOo 1.1.1 won't let you save it as a presentation background; save it as a default template. It will end up as an *.sti file in /home/steen/.openoffice/1.1.1/user/template/. Just copy this file to the system location in /usr/lib/openoffice/share/template/english/layout.

The files will lack "Click to insert text", but they'll be available in the change slide layout menu.

Make backups of the directory where you keep the templates, or you'll lose them on an upgrade.

To configure for several systems, check out /usr/bin/ooconfigimport.

Check "regular expressions" for these options:

  • a leading ^ implies "start of a line"
  • a trailing $ implies end of a line
  • to remove line shifts within a text, but preserve paragraph breaks:
    • find ^$ replace XXX
    • find $ replace space (just use the space bar)
    • find XXX replace \n\n (the second \n is optional)
  • this string finds all occurrences of <p> at the end of a line only:
    $[^/]p>$

For discussions, see OpenOffice Writer Forum and search and replace in OOo.

Installation history

On 10 June 2005 I decided to check out OpenOffice.org 2.0 on clitunno (amd64). 

Installation instructions

Instructions for amd64:

I do run Openoffice 2.0 on my computer.
I downloaded it from http://www.openoffice.org
Then I untared it and did
alien --to-deb *.rpm
Then I install it with
dpkg -i --force-overwrite --force-architecture *.deb
Then it installs under /opt/openoffice.org1.9.104 and I make symlink
from /opt/openoffice.org1.9.104/program/soffice.bin to /usr/local/bin/soffice

It runs perfectly with ia32-libs 1.4
Here are instructions for Debian in general:
1.) Download native .rpms
2.) "tar xzf" to extract RPMS/ subdir; cd RPMS/
3.) Run su to become root and run 'alien -k *.i586.rpm' to produce .deb packages
4.) Install via "dpkg -i --force-overwrite *.deb" (--force-overwrite
needed to correct spurious file conflicts in .debs produced by alien)
5.) Edit /opt/openoffice1.9.51/share/config/javavendors.xml to remove references to IBM and Blackdown vendors
6.) As root, run by hand postinst commands to complete configuration:
   # /opt/openoffice1.9.51/program/pkgchk --shared (you get 'pkgchk done.')
   # /opt/openoffice1.9.51/program/configimport --spool (you get success msgs)
   # /opt/openoffice1.9.51/program/update-mime-data "openoffice1.9"
7.) Exit su shell via 'exit'
8.) Run '/opt/openoffice1.9.51/program/soffice'

I didn't install logical links in /usr/bin to the various programs, you may choose to do so.

So this worked -- the executable is /usr/local/bin/soffice.bin -- but OO Presenter crashes when I try to open an older file, though it works fine for creating a new presentation. I complains it doesn't have java runtime engine and can't incorporate video. By the time you need to give talks again, this should all be working!

On 23 June 2003 I was unable to open a Word document in oowriter 1.0.3 and decided to replace it, viz, just purge openoffice.org openoffice.org-bin openoffice.org-debian-files openoffice.org-help-en
openoffice.org-l10n-en.

I found the 1.1 beta2 on the Debian site, under experimental, and downloaded the deb files. The version read the Word file with no problems. The packages appear to lack icons and I copied them in from spello:

    scp /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/ooo* sigillo://usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/

The version may be unstable and buggy, but so far it looks good. These are the files:

openoffice.org1.1
openoffice.org1.1-bin
openoffice.org1.1-debian-files
openoffice.org1.1-l10n-en
openoffice.org1.1-mimelnk
openoffice.org1.1-help-en
openoffice.org1.1-spellcheck (*not yet available)

There's also a package that lets you use all your fonts on OOo, but it's not ready for 1.1 yet. See the OpenOffice Debian packages list for the latest.


  

 

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