Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 10:43 am Post subject: Default Preferences for multiple users
I'm sure this has had to come up before, but I haven't found references to it in any of my forum or neowiki searches... so please go easy on a neonewbie...
We have many network users (students) that all have seperate accounts for use on any of our macs. currently any time a student uses neooffice for the first time, it creates a set of preferences for them in ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1/. unfortunately we need to be multi-platform compatible so if they save a file to a thumb drive and take it home or to another computer to work on it, it can be opened in msoffice. I know those options can be set in neooffice preferences, but I'm looking for a way to do it globally instead of having to manually copy pref files or change preferences for every account.
Is there any way to change the default preferences for neo office (e.g. save everything in msoffice format, don't warn when not saving in O.D. format, etc.) so that when different users log into a machine and use neooffice for the first time, it uses those options when it creates the ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1/ files for that user???
and/or
is there any way to change the search path for the preference files to something besides ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1/ (say a nice spot in the /Library folder on the hard drive.)
Joined: Nov 27, 2005 Posts: 108 Location: Salford, UK
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:13 am Post subject:
Get the teachers to do their job and teach the kids how to use Software and not A Software Package. Their going to have to learn the use of "Save As..." at some point in their lives.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 5:07 am Post subject: teach the teachers??
Baggypants wrote:
Get the teachers to do their job and teach the kids how to use Software and not A Software Package. Their going to have to learn the use of "Save As..." at some point in their lives.
/IT in education rant, sorry.
sigh... it would be easier to convince a politician not to be crooked, or to teach a kindergartener to do differential equations. but if you're an IT in an educational institution, you already know that. keep in mind that for teachers around here "microsoft" is the only word processor on the planet...then again "microsoft" is also the only spreadsheet, and every LCD projector on the planet is universally known as a powerpoint. (Teacher: "the bulb in my powerpoint burned out and needs to be replaced." My Answer: search google images using the phrase "light bulb", hold your mouse button and choose "copy image", open your powerpoint and paste it in a new slide... now your powerpoint has a new bulb.)
sorry guys, this is my fourth monday in a row this week and I'm a bit punchy. anybody have any serious solutions???
Joined: Nov 27, 2005 Posts: 108 Location: Salford, UK
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:49 am Post subject:
Believe me I quite understand. And pity the poor Student who does happen to be running OO.o at home.
As a wild shot in the dark however, there appears to be a preferences folder structure placed in the NeoOffice.app/Contents/presets/
you could try setting up a preferred install and copying the ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-1.2 folder contents back into the package and then run it as another user and see what happens.
Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 2051 Location: Midwest, USA
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:35 am Post subject:
I have no idea if this will work for Neo or not, but you could try creating a symbolic link (using Terminal). i.e. create a NeoOffice 2.x folder in each student's preferences and make it a symbolic link back to a master set. (you would also have to set permissions correctly)
That's how we handled the preferences issue on our home computer for another program (A Cook's Books).
The downsides I can think of are:
students would not be able to set their own preferences separate from the master list
all templates, image galleries, macros, autotexts, autocorrects, etc. created by a student would have to be stored in the master file, meaning that all students had access to them (and could vandalize them....)
I'm not sure it's any less work than setting each one individually.
I suppose it is potentially possible that you could use the symbolic link only for the file with the Save as MS setting in it. But you'd have to figure out which one that is, and you would have to replace the files/create the links manually in each account.
How about another option:
Create a set of instructions that spell out the settings that need to be changed. Make this available to the students the first time they use NeoOffice. Then they learn how to make these adjustments, and it's their responsibility to take care of it.
Of course, there may be excellent reasons why this won't work either.
I'm not sure if I've helped you or not, as I seem to have come up with as many problems/inconveniences as ideas.
You might be able to do a clean install, change the prefs, and then put these back into NeoOffice folder (since it copies the settings from there) or even into the installer. This would only work if you can distribute images onto all of the students macs.
The quick fix was be to just copy a freshly tweaked NeoOffice preferences folder into all of the students' users/<name>/library folders. They will lose their preferences from earlier versions and it takes disk space for those who do not use it, but it should work.
In general, I think it might help if someone/Patrick could provide a guide or a script or something for customizing the preferences. I understand it is tricky, but I think large volume users could be a nice source of donations. I know we have seen several multi-user installs yielding people that troll and do not donate, but also some that have netted us significant support (Geneva Scouting office comes to mind).
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:23 am Post subject: a solution... almost
Baggypants wrote:
As a wild shot in the dark however, there appears to be a preferences folder structure placed in the NeoOffice.app/Contents/presets/
.
.
I predict a world of fail however. Best of luck.
Good call...
The magic folder is called registry, and it doesn't exist in the NeoOffice.app/Contents/presets/ , but appears in the ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1/user folder after the settings have been changed.
actually I had already tried your suggestion, but when I logged in as a different user, and ran neo for the first time, the settings were all at the original defaults... (the .nocheckforpatches fix also didn't seem to work) BUT (and here's the key) after you quit the initial run of Neo, and open it again... POOF like magic, all the settings are as I had set them in the other account, so somewhere it's not reading the settings. my guess is that it assumes there aren't any yet so it doesn't bother trying to read the registry folder that doesn't exist yet.
so if you can live with the fact that Neo won't figure itself out until the second run in a new account, here's how it works:
1. On your master machine that you will be making clones from, login as an admin user and install NeoOffice, and the current patches... Set all the options the way you want them and quit.
2. Donate of course
3. Open a terminal
4. Create a file named .noshowdonationpage in the /Applications/NeoOffice.app/Contents/MacOS folder.
5. Create a file named .nocheckforpatches in the NeoOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/folder.
6. issue the following command:
sudo cp -R ~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1/user/registry /Applications/NeoOffice.app/Contents/presets/
(note: if you are using a version other than 2.1, you'll have to modify the path to match the correct preferences folder)
7. enter your admin password when sudo asks for it
8. close your terminal, finish installing the rest of your other software on your master machine, run one last disk repair, and clone your heart out.
--- the down side
the custom preferences won't take effect until the SECOND time Neo is run for each user
double clicking anything saved with a .doc extension tries to open in textedit, unless you nuke textedit (because open with... preferences are also associated by user)
for now, it's close enough for government work... but if anyone knows a workaround for the two minor annoyances, that would be great.
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: a solution... almost
EduFixItGuy wrote:
actually I had already tried your suggestion, but when I logged in as a different user, and ran neo for the first time, the settings were all at the original defaults... (the .nocheckforpatches fix also didn't seem to work) BUT (and here's the key) after you quit the initial run of Neo, and open it again... POOF like magic, all the settings are as I had set them in the other account
I remember noticing this with one of the first OOo 1.9 builds that ran on Mac OS X, trying to force it to use prefs I had set with the previous 1.9.x build; sorry, I should have thought to mention it here. Back in those days it actually overwrote the copied prefs, so that's definitely an improvement....
EduFixItGuy wrote:
4. Create a file named .noshowdonationpage in the /Applications/NeoOffice.app/Contents/MacOS folder.
5. Create a file named .nocheckforpatches in the NeoOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/folder.
You shouldn't need the .nocheckforpatches file; .noshowdonationpage stops both.
EduFixItGuy wrote:
double clicking anything saved with a .doc extension tries to open in textedit, unless you nuke textedit (because open with... preferences are also associated by user)
Assuming the users won't have any other custom mappings, you can probably shove in a LaunchServices.plist in each user account (though that might require a restart).
Actually, I bet you can defaults write it. Or, maybe not, since there's some hex ID for each app
Maybe forcing LaunchServices re-registration of just Neo will cause that association to change?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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