OO.o-Insalling crashed my Apple-Mail - HELP!

[Olaf]

Hi all, yes, I did read the warning, the actual version is just for the X11 etc-expert, but I thought, maybe I should try becoming one.
However, installation of OO.o did not work - the installers for fondu and DLCompat did not execute automaticaly. It was mentioned at some dialogues, I should click on the installer icon in the dock - none such appeared whatsoever; and in the installer window I should "authenticate"(?) the installer by clicking on the lock in the lower left corner - no such such window. However the Fontu- and the DLCompat.pkg in the "external installers"-directory could be executed manually - but where was the OO.o-application by now?
After reading some topics at this forum I found it was a bit too much Unix-terminal-commands for me, so I decided better to wait for the Aqua-version.
But: since my Apple-Mail-Program is not working correctly any more! It doesn't show the main window voluntarily; when I open it via the menu, it doesn't show the list of mails; the icons in the bar do not work and I have to force the programm to quit.
Other programs seem to be allright, at least finder, safari and some other show no oddities yet.
I read something of a library conflict somewhere (?) in this forum, could this be the point? I ran the uninstaller OpenOffice, but it couldn't remove the "external Installers"-Directory. Instead, it made the "Openoffice.org"-Directory invisible, so it took some efforts to get them into the Waste basket. Nevertheless, still - two restarts included - Apple Mail is no cooperating. Do I have to deinstall the DLCompat-Library manually? How do I find it - there is no such file (visible, that is) anymore.
However: no X11/Darwin-pro here, for sure!
, Olaf

[OPENSTEP]

There are actually no interdependencies of anything installed by the OOo installer or its subinstallers and Apple Mail, so that shouldn't be an issue. How much free disk space did you have at the time? E.g. did you run out of disk space on your main startup disk? If the installer had trouble running some of the subinstallers, you may be low on disk space.

When I run out of disk space on my main startup disk and try to restart/shutdown, I frequently find OS X loses settings like my dock preferences and occassionally preferences for applications that were running at the time. I've lost Safari, Dock, and InstallAnywhere preferences for sure, but have never seen it happen with Apple Mail yet.

My preference fubaring is unrelated ot the OOo installer specifically, just running out of disk space in general (e.g. my Terminal scrollbacks are "unlimited", running Photoshop, a few java vms, a few builds, codewarrior, project builder, safari, mail, etc. etc. etc)

ed

[Paraplegic_Racehorse]

How do I make OOo X11 (1.0.3 GM) see application packages as programs? I'm having this trouble getting it to "see" Mail.app, Safari.app and RBrowser.app (FTP program). Is there a specific file within the bundle that will make this all work?

I haven't actually tried it, yet, but I presume this functions in Neo and Neo/J because they are less "UNIX" and more "Apple" oriented?

[pluby]

To get OOo to interact with Mac applications, I have relied on shell scripts that take an argument and then invoke the AppleScript engine to invoke an open document event against a specific application.

A simple example of this is in the NeoOffice/J cvs tree (neojava/sysui/oounix/office/scripts/nswrapper.sh). This particular script is used by NeoOffice/J to send a URL to your browser.

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
exit 0
fi

if [ -x /usr/bin/osascript ]; then
# Send an open document event to the default browser
exec /usr/bin/osascript -e 'open location "'"$1"'"'
fi

exit 0

You would probably want to edit the "-e" argument to osascript so that it does something with a specific application.

Patrick

[OPENSTEP]

For OOo, I've been trying to use the "/usr/bin/open" command. This works well for URLs and the like (which is how OOo X11 can send a URL to the browser.../usr/bin/open simply chooses the right app). I've had problems launching bundles with /usr/bin/open unless I point the argument straight into the bundle right at the executable in Contents/MacOS. You may want to check man pages for open...it's been around since NeXTSTEP days.

For more complicated things like sending mail as a document, you'll probably need to use osascript and AppleScript magic like Patrick The /usr/bin/open incantation just isn't powerful enough to do more then be like "hey you, something or other, try to open this file" or "hey, OS, try to do something to display this URL" which generally only works for http:// (launches browser) and file:// (opens a finder window).

If you're referring to getting bundles to look like total files in the file browsers...that one's a bit further off Hell, even local hard drives show up as network mounts (I speak only for Neo and OOo, not NeoJ on that one)

ed

[Olaf]

[OPENSTEP]

Mine live inside of ~/Library/Preferences

They are actually bunches of files named "com.apple.*" where the * is replaced with the name of the actual application. Check to see if they're there. Most Mac applications actually don't interact directly with these XML files (IIRC they're XML), but rather access them through the CFPreferences API.

When TextEdit refuses to open, are you seeing any messages in the Console from Core Foundation routines? (prefixed with CF).

ed