Hi :) Yes, it's a pain when different parts of the project have different ideas. Steve, i think you might find the 3.4.5 and even the 3.4.4 deal with the problems that are keeping you back on the 3.3.x branch at the moment.
Can you test-drive the 3.4.5? http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel Regards from Tom :) --- On Sun, 11/3/12, Steve Edmonds <[email protected]> wrote: From: Steve Edmonds <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibO/Java Issue from InfoWorld Article To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, 11 March, 2012, 20:18 And note that 3.5 is the install with Recommended next to it on the LO download page. I am still recommending 3.3 as I was hoping 3.5 would fix the things I didn't like in 3.4. steve On 2012-03-11 13:03, Tom Davies wrote: > Hi :) > This email contains only my own personal opinions. I'm not even a member of > TDF let alone any kind of representative. > > Java releases new version frequently, and each release seems to primarily be > to fix security problems with the previous release. Allegedly Java 7 has > been compromised and allegedly there is already malware out in the wild that > can exploit it! Java 7 has not even been released yet! > > LibreOffice is writing out any dependance on java as quickly as reasonably > possible but it is also doing a number of other things at the same time. It > has consolidated long-running forks of OOo such as Go-oo, hugely increased > functionality and tidied the code to the point of making it 20-30% smaller. > > The new 3.5.0 release is the first release in a new branch. General wisdom > is to wait until the first service pack, in this case the 3.5.1. The latest > stable version is the 3.4.5. With OpenSource software there are often 2 > branches, a "stable" branch and a "new features" or "development" branch. > That often confuses people that are new to OpenSource. Ubuntu has a lot of > trouble explaining it's LTS releases. A lot of people that are new to > OpenSource have been using LibreOffice. Unfortunately the Web-design Team > chose this moment to only show the 1 branch on the main downloads page and > chose the more exciting release rather than the 'old' stable one. > > It's sad that the author happened to choose this particular time to do the > review and didn't try out any of the other releases of LibreOffice but that > is just the way life works. > Regards from > Tom :) > > > --- On Sat, 10/3/12, Stephen Leibowitz<[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Stephen Leibowitz<[email protected]> > Subject: [libreoffice-users] LibO/Java Issue from InfoWorld Article > To: [email protected] > Date: Saturday, 10 March, 2012, 4:10 > > An article recently appeared in the online publication InfoWorld > titled, “LibreOffice 3.5: The best Office killer yet.” The article is > at: > http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/libreoffice-35-the-best-office-killer-yet-187534 > > The author discussed getting LibO to work with Java: > “Worse, LibreOffice's Java interface is finicky. I tried installing > the latest Java 7, but LibreOffice said my JRE was "defective." When I > tried again with Java 6, the same applications crashed without > explanation. I eventually got it working, but installing and > reinstalling the various components wasted a lot of time, which > doesn't bode well for unattended installations.” > > I had an email exchange with the author. I wrote to him these two paragraphs: > > Oracle’s Java website has a page that starts, “Why is Java SE 7 not > yet available on java.com?” Version 7 is currently only recommended > for developer testing. (http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/java7.xml) > > I installed LibO 3.5.0 on a Windows system with Java 6. That > installation and the use of the Java-dependent Base application in > LibO were normal. > ******** > > The author wrote back a detailed description of his attempt. It ends > with a suggestion that it should be forwarded to the “LibreOffice > folks”, so I have attached it below. Does anyone have any ideas? > > ******** > What I did was this: > > 1. Installed LibreOffice 3.5.0 without having a JRE installed > (because that's one use case for the suite). I used a clean VM of > Windows 7 with the latest updates implied, but no other extraneous > software that could interfere with my tests. > 2. Launched the LibreOffice Start icon. It seemed to go through > some sort of "first run" procedure, which produced a series of errors > about a missing JVM. I remember having to dismiss about 4-5 Java error > boxes. Then nothing seemed to happen. > 3. Launched the LibreOffice Start icon a second time. This time it > worked and I saw the Start Center, and I was able to launch all the > applications, as expected. > 4. Base, of course, didn't work. When I tried to create a database > I saw the Java error message again, which I expected. > 5. Downloaded and installed Java. I used Java SE 7 because A.) it's > the latest one, and it's the one Oracle is encouraging everyone to > get, so you can't expect casual office-suite users not to use it; and > B.) the LibreOffice folks do explicitly say that while there were > problems with Java 7 for a while, it is now supported. > 6. Launched Base. At the point that it would have given me the > "missing JVM" error message, now I just got a spinning hourglass icon. > After a while, Windows gave me a message saying "the program has > stopped responding." When I dismissed the error, LibreOffice would > exit. I tried launching various LibreOffice components at various > ways, but every time it tried to invoke Java, I got the same result. > Waiting several minutes at the "stopped responding" dialog did not > help. > 7. Downloaded Java SE 6, installed that. Now everything was the > same as in Step 6, only instead of "stopped responding," now I got an > immediate crash and the programs would exit. > 8. Uninstalled Java SE 7. No change. > 9. Uninstalled Java SE 6, then downloaded and installed the entire > JDK 6 (including the compilers, libraries, tools, etc.). No change. > 10. At this point, I thought, "Maybe something is wrong with this > Windows install. Maybe Java doesn't work on it at all." So I launched > one of the sample apps that came with the JDK. That worked, confirming > that Java worked. > 11. So I launched Base again and ... this time it worked. I didn't > get any error message. I could create databases with Base, and > everything seemed to work fine. > 12. Just to see, I downloaded and installed Java SE 7. This time, > everything still worked. > 13. I uninstalled JDK 6, so now I only had Java SE 7. Everything still >worked. > > So as far as I can tell, the JRE needed some kind of first-run > initialization (maybe it needs to setup some Registry keys or > something) and whichever way the LibreOffice applications were trying > to invoke the JRE was launching it in an unstable state. Once I ran > the other Java app, it stabilized, and after that LibreOffice worked. > > So that's weird, but it's not the kind of thing I think should be > detailed in a review. Who knows what was really happening? But it > happened, and on a very, very clean Windows machine (cleaner than any > machine that has been in use). And I didn't do anything "weird." All I > did was click the installer icons in the most obvious way. So I still > thought the Java issue was worth mentioning, but only as a gotcha -- > and to say that I don't think it makes sense to have a hybrid suite > like this, and that the Document Foundation should try to remove the > Java dependencies. > > P.S. I know, I should probably forward this information to the > LibreOffice folks somehow. > ******** > -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
