FAQ

There are also user FAQs!

So no-one ever asked me these, I just made them up to astro-turf a bit (safer, wipe-clean, more durable questions).

Why do branches like 'mws_srx645' have odd numbers in them ?

By consulting various oracles, entrails etc. it transpires that in theory this number once incremented weekly, there being weekly freezes and hence solvers, development environments. The 'mws' stands for 'Master Workspace'. Master Workspaces for releases are on CVS branches. Those branches are named with Master Workspace name, f.e. 'mws_ooh680' is the name of the branch of workspace OOH680, used for OpenOffice.org 2.4. The latest 3.0 development is done with the DEV300 stem ob CVS HEAD; with auto-incrementing milestones; hence milestone tags like DEV300_m5 would be common.

Why does XYZ require Java ? up-stream/Sun are so evil !?

Nah up-stream just use the best tool to hand, and have a different set world-view to you, where Java is an engineering solution to their cross platform problems. By using Java StarDivision can avoid having to re-invent and then maintain an essentially competing cross-platform layer. There is no malice here whatsoever; just pragmatic engineering from a different perspective.

See Java and OpenOffice.org

Why is [t]csh so broken ?

This is rather inscrutable; some particularly curious brokenness would be the way piping commands on stdin is crucially different to inputting them from the tty thus: echo 'echo #define DLL_NAME "libsch641li.so" >./foo.hxx' | /bin/tcsh -s fails to do anything whereas typing the same thing into the shell works just fine. Even more oddly: tcsh -fc 'echo #define DLL_NAME "libsch641li.so" >./foo.hxx' does do the right thing. See also csh.

I just tried to re-locate the build, why doesn't it work ?

The simple answer is: you need to run relocate /path/to/new/build; another more complex answer is:

Well, assuming you have re-configured things (LinuxIntelEnv.Set will need paths tweaking too — and re-importing to your shell) — then it's most likely down to the ubiquitous non-relative paths, coded in lots of generated / built files, particularly '.dpc*' (dependency) files. Try: find -name '*.dpc*' -exec rm {} \;

The stlport does some really broken things, so you will also need to edit the 'stl_gcc.h' inside the solver/, and replace the two path instances there (see inc/stl/config/stl_gcc.h. )

CVS says 'Fatal Error aborting. [acc] no such user', why ?

While of course it's possible that your user name is not registered; often this just means your ~/.cvspass got lost and/or that you haven't logged in. cvs login, and repeat the command.

What does '.pro' in 'unxlngi4.pro' mean ?

Product — isn't it obvious ?

What does OpenOffice really look like ?

Today I found a photograph of it on my system, so I stuck it in here:

Abstraction Layers

SW: Star Writer
SD: Star Draw
SC: Star Calc
SCH: Star Chart
SFX: Star Framework ???
SVX: Star View X for miscellany ?, it's a bit of a dumping ground for dialogs and shared between apps code
UNO: Universal Network Objects
UCB: Universal Content Broker
SBL: Scripting And Basic Library
SO: ???
VOS: Virtual Operating System
VCL: Visual Class Library
STL: Standard Template Library
RTL: Run Time Library
OSL: Operating System Library

How do I take a screenshot of OO.o ?

OOo does some very odd things with X resources, thus some conventional screenshot apps fail to take accurate shots. ImageMagick's 'import' however does a good job; use:

import foo.png

from the console, or

sleep 2; import -window root foo.png

instead.

NB. unless you want your world to look tiny, you need to turn large toolbar icons first.

You can also use The GIMP to Acquire Screenshots of OpenOffice.org. From the Gimp:

• Click File
• Click Aquire
• Click Screen Shot

Why does the code look so ugly?

The authors must be using a really strange editor. It thinks tab stops are on every fourth column. Of course, the files come out ugly in Unix editors which know that tabs are eight characters wide.

If you happen to use a Real Editor, we have some pink glasses to sell to you. Paste the contents of [1] into your .emacs, or load it with a line like this: (load "/path/to/that/file.el"). Don't forget to adapt my-openoffice-path-regexp to your needs.

Henceforth emacs will use 4-column tabs for your OOo source files. (And use C++-Mode for sdi-, hrc-, and src-files.) Alternatively if you are sufficiently set in your ways that you can't cope with investing these few seconds do: M-x set-variable\ntab-width 4 & learn to love change.

Apparently if you use vi you can do: :set ts=4 sw=4, and good luck to you. For a better vim, use :set ts=4 sw=4 et to also expand tabs to spaces, as this is what new code should use.

Where can I suggest ideas for what OpenOffice.org should do and what I don't/do like about it?

Awaiting an answer from a kind contributor.

How can OOo be used to author wiki pages at a MediaWiki site?

Awaiting an answer from a kind contributor.

Can the content of a MediaWiki hosted wiki be exported into OOo?

Awaiting an answer from a kind contributor.

The dream idea is to take a complete wiki and flow it into a filter so that it can be exported into a series of OOo documents, or one larger OOo document. This would allow writters to start a wiki and then finish with a book.

I'm not sure if they can be exported from MediaWiki to OOo, but the reverse is possible. If you follow :- [Odt2 To Wiki]

How can OOo be used to author blog pages at a Blogspot.com hosted site?

A filter exists for MS Word users to write blog articles -- and then upload the content to the blog easily. A similiar add-on is oooblogger which is an experimental blogger plugin for OOo which is not complete, but is a suitable starting position for a developer (python) who wants to tackle this area

See also

• CvsFAQ - for CVS problems
• OOo_Ergonomics - why is it so painful to use ?
• Bibliographic/FAQ - for bibliographic problems
• How to use Childworkspaces