StarOffice 5.2 uses the new glibc 2.1.1 or newer. You should make sure that the corresponding libraries have been installed on your system before you start as the setup may not run otherwise.
Most Linux distributions already use glibc 2.1.1 or newer as their default library. The following table shows a selection of Linux distributions that contain glibc 2.1.1 by default.
Linux Distribution First version with glibc 2.1.1 Current Version
Log in as normal using your user ID and run the "Setup" program. Select an installation method and installation directory. You require write access to the installation directory.
If you wish to run a network installation (multi-user installation), start (as root) the setup with the option /net. After the network installation has been completed, each StarOffice user needs to call up the setup from the office directory of the network installation (WITHOUT /net) under their user ID. They will then be able to install the workstation installation. This will install about 2MB of data into the corresponding Home directory of each user.
StarOffice 5.2 now provides better support of East European, Russian, Greek and Turkish character sets. You are now able to create, load, save, import and print documents in Cyrillic on a Russian system.
If you are using a Solaris/Linux system you only have to ensure that the corresponding locale has been set up and that the corresponding fonts are available. StarOffice can only print Type1 fonts on Solaris/Linux systems. If your fonts are only available as TrueType fonts, you have to convert them to Type1 fonts to print them. Problems with the character width or character positioning may arise with exisitng or converted Type1 fonts. In most case these problems can be corrected by using the SPAdmin program provided with StarOffice. More information can be found in the Setup Guide or in the SETUP.PDF file.
Please note that documents containing East European, Russian, Greek and Turkish fonts may no longer be processed or loaded in a StarOffice 5.1a, 5.1 or 5.0 as crashes or loss of data may occur. StarOffice 5.1a, 5.1 or 5.0 will NOT issue any warnings if you try to load this type of document.
In addition to the dictionaries contained in every installation set, the CD version of StarOffice contains further language modules made up of dictionaries, hyphenation and in some cases thesauri.
The following language modules are currently available on the CD:
Afrikaans, Brazilian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
A Readme file with installation information is found in the ADDON directory of the StarOffice installation CD.
Remarks: These additional language modules are only available on the CD version of StarOffice 5.2 and cannot be downloaded.
If you experience difficulties when using an Xfree S3Virge driver noticeable by the "freezing" of the X server, set the environment variable SAL_DO_NOT_USE_INVERT50 to ╗true½ by using the following syntax:
For users of a Bourne Shell (e.g. bash):
export SAL_DO_NOT_USE_INVERT50=true
For users of a C Shell:
setenv SAL_DO_NOT_USE_INVERT50 true
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
If the above named environment variable is used, different window elements may be shown in an inverted way. As the "freezing" of the X server can also happen with every other program when using an Xfree S3Virge driver, we recommend, therefore, that the appropriate SVGA driver be used at all times. This means that the setting of the environment variable is no longer a must.
It is now possible to use Java and JavaScript (which is realized internally through Java) in StarOffice for Linux. This has not been possible in the past as there a Java Lib which correctly supported the native threads for glibc2 has not been available for StarOffice. Such a library is now available. To activate this functionality you only need to edit the Start file soffice within the StarOffice files. This is found in the directory office52 when using a single workstation installation and in the corresponding directory on the network server. Only the "root" user has the authorization to edit this file in a network installation. Furthermore, you need to enable Java under "Tools - Options - Browser - Other" in StarOffice and Javascript under "Tools - Options - Browser - Scripting".
Java for StarOffice under Linux
StarOffice for Linux uses the native threads for glibc. These are now available for the first time in a Java library which also supports the Java Native Interface (JNI) that is needed.
Requirements:
Java (JDK 1.1.8) Installation for glibc2 native threads from http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux.html
PGP support requires a JAVA environment installed on the system, because the PGP to StarOffice link takes place by way of JAVA. In StarOffice you also have to enable use of Java, under Tools - Options - Browser - Other.
The StarOffice Setup allows you to integrate KDE. This means that icons for StarOffice setup and program will be installed amongst other things. If you are working with a different Window manager, there are two icon files in XPM format (L_soffice.xpm and S_office.xpm) in the StarOffice directory. You can use these according to the instructions contained in your Window manager documentation to insert icons onto your user interface so that StarOffice can be called up.
The installation program uses Info-ZIP Group source text to compress data. No extra costs will be incurred when using this. The original source text is freely available from the Internet under:
Portions Copyright 1998, 1999 James Clark. Portions Copyright 1996, 1998 Netscape Communications Corporation. Portions Copyright 1996, 1997, Kenneth Albanowski. In accordance with the appropriate licenses you can find the original versions and - if applicable - the modified versions under http://www.sun.com/staroffice/source/index.html.
Due to technical reasons differences may occur between application functionality and its description in the User's Guide. The most up-to-date information is, therefore, to be found in the StarOffice Help.
