OO Won't Launch in Leopard

[Fauch]

OO won't launch in Leopard 10.5.1 Version 2.3-PPC - Newest Build of X11 from XQuartz
If I click on the OO App it gives me the timeout as expected but then if I click OK it just gives me a spinning beachball and never proceeds further.
If X11 is open already I go straight to the beachball without the error message.

I deleted all vestages of OO from the system, reinstalled OO, and even tried making a new user with the same results so it's seemingly not a preferences or a corruption issue.

The funny thing is, I can launch the "soffice" binary manually and it works without a hitch, but for some reason the "application" won't launch the program and just hangs.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[jlandstr]

Hello

I have exactly the same experience. Open Office won't launch from the icon, but the soffice shell script in /Applications/OpenOffice.org 2.2.app/Contents/MacOS/program starts the programme fine. Could this problem be the result of one of the Apple upgrades to X11?

John Landstreet

[wurzel]

Any advice would be appreciated.

Try reading up on the other posts with regard to Leopard and OOo not starting ? Sorry to appear blunt, but a forum has a history, and this question must have been asked at least 20 times since Leopard was released, so a simple browse through the previous posts would've put you on track. There is a problem with the 2.3.1 startup script as it is launched from the icon using Leopard and the version of X11 that Apple has provided. This problem has been fixed (or worked around) in the latest development release of OOo. Leopard was released after OOo 2.3.1, so there wasn't much that the dev team could do about the quirk caused by Apple's choice of X11), especially since the devs are mostly volunteers, most of whom do not have access to a Leopard workstation.

Alex

[Digren]

Hi Alex,

I'm having the exact same problem as the original poster. I've searched through all 66 posts in this forum, and other than this thread and this one I don't see anyone else with this problem, so looking for other threads doesn't seem to help. Since you say this: "and the version of X11 that Apple has provided" and both I and the original poster have upgraded from the version provided by Apple, I'm not sure if any of the suggestion applies. I apologize if I'm misunderstood something as I've only had my Mac for four days and am merely trying to make it work as competently as my old PC.

As the original poster above says:
1. Leopard 10.5.1 (I'm on Intel; OP is on PPC) factory install on new machine with X11 preinstalled.
2. OpenOffice.org 2.3
3. I installed the latest build of X11 from XQuartz
4. I know about the timeout window that pops up, and I see all the threads about. That's not the problem.
5. Before I installed the latest build of X11, after I clicked ok on the timeout window, OpenOffice.org would start up ok.
6. After I installed the latest build of X11, after I click ok the timeout window, OpenOffice.org menu appears with limited options, I get the rotating beachball, and nothing else ever happens. In the Activity Monitor I see OpenOffice.org running with 1 thread, and soffice.bin running with 5 threads, but I'm unable to open or view any documents. Even if I quit X11, OpenOffice.org and soffice.bin stay running. I have to force quit them and reboot.

So, given that we're not asking about the timeout error, but instead we're asking about the "won't launch" error that prevent OpenOffice started at all, is there any other advice? If there is a thread about this and I missed it, a link would be greatly appreciated.

[wurzel]

As the original poster above says:
1. Leopard 10.5.1 (I'm on Intel; OP is on PPC) factory install on new machine with X11 preinstalled.
2. OpenOffice.org 2.3
3. I installed the latest build of X11 from XQuartz
4. I know about the timeout window that pops up, and I see all the threads about. That's not the problem.
5. Before I installed the latest build of X11, after I clicked ok on the timeout window, OpenOffice.org would start up ok.
6. After I installed the latest build of X11, after I click ok the timeout window, OpenOffice.org menu appears with limited options, I get the rotating beachball, and nothing else ever happens. In the Activity Monitor I see OpenOffice.org running with 1 thread, and soffice.bin running with 5 threads, but I'm unable to open or view any documents. Even if I quit X11, OpenOffice.org and soffice.bin stay running. I have to force quit them and reboot.

So, given that we're not asking about the timeout error, but instead we're asking about the "won't launch" error that prevent OpenOffice started at all, is there any other advice? If there is a thread about this and I missed it, a link would be greatly appreciated.

They apear to be linked. The timeout error occurs because of the X11 that Apple provided with Leopard. Additionally, it would appear that the "upgrade" ?? from XQuartz makes things worse.

Someone here has reported similar problems to yours, but apparently they went away, so I guess we'll never know :

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... pard#p5010

It might be better to reinstall the original X11 installed by Apple. This should be on the system CD ROMs that came with the computer. There are explanations on the web in more specialised Mac forums about how to do this, i.e. replace the XDarwin version by the original X11 provided. More than that I can't say, I'm afraid. I deliberately didn't buy a Leopard machine in November because of compatibility concerns with some of the software that we have running on other Tiger machines.

Alex

[Fauch]

Any advice would be appreciated.

Try reading up on the other posts with regard to Leopard and OOo not starting ? Sorry to appear blunt, but a forum has a history, and this question must have been asked at least 20 times since Leopard was released, so a simple browse through the previous posts would've put you on track. There is a problem with the 2.3.1 startup script as it is launched from the icon using Leopard and the version of X11 that Apple has provided. This problem has been fixed (or worked around) in the latest development release of OOo. Leopard was released after OOo 2.3.1, so there wasn't much that the dev team could do about the quirk caused by Apple's choice of X11), especially since the devs are mostly volunteers, most of whom do not have access to a Leopard workstation.

Alex

I DID search the forum for previous posts and I didn't find a single one that addressed this particular issue.
I SPECIFICALLY mentioned in my post that I am NOT referring to the "timeout error", but even when clicking OK, or X11 is ALREADY open OO will not launch from the "droplet" and hangs indefinitely.

Reverting to the original Leopard X11 is not an option because it has some serious bugs most notably preventing Gimp or anything GTK based from even launching.

As the droplet is merely an executable Applescript and the OO binary WILL launch manually it should be fairly simple to edit it to make it work. Most likely, editing a SINGLE line of code will do the trick. Unfortunately that is beyond the scope of my expertise and I was hoping someone with more knowledge about the intricacies or OO could help.

[Hagar Delest]

As a workaround, you can try NeoOffice.

[PGJen]

Hi, I am a very new person to iMac and Open Office and am not a techie at all! I used to get the "timed out" notice but after I clicked the OK (or whatever) button, Open Office would open. It was annoying but at least it opened, and the spreadsheet & word processor worked well.

I wanted to make it faster however so I Googled for help and read somewhere that I should install the new version of X11 (2.3.1) to solve the problem. I tried that and now things are much worse. I get the same problem as the posts below - if I click on one of my OO documents, X11 launches, then I get the timed out notice, but then the "beach ball" just sits there and doesn't spin and nothing opens. I tried reinstalling my original version of X11 but that did not work. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling OO, but that didn't help either. I wish I hadn't made any changes! Anyway, I just thought I would give you the information about how I ended up not being able to open OO in case it is useful for you to help figure out this problem. Since I need to use my spreadsheets for school, maybe I will try NeoOffice for now; Excel can't open OO spreadsheets (I tried sending them to a Mac user who has MS Office).

[PGJen]

Hi - sorry, the version of X11 I downloaded is "2.1.3"; it is not 2.3.1 as I noted below.

[smsm1]

Can you please try one of the latest builds available from http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/Ope ... C680_m246/

[benh]

Hi,

I'm having the same issues, OS X 10.5.2,OO 2.3.0 and X11 2.1.4.
Timeout followed by beachball and nothing.
I have noticed JRE properties popping up and going away in the dock.
The link by smsm1 is broken.

Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Ben

[doug_mac]

Yes, I am having the same issues as well. Any of the scripts that are in /Applications/OpenOffice.org 2.3.app/Contents/MacOS/ will launch OO just fine, even when X11 is not already running.

I created a symbolic link to soffice as a work around...

I will post if I figure anything out...