[Solved] In 3.0 Beta, how startup directly in Writer

[jimhof]

Just installed 3.0 beta for aqua mac. Is there a way to have the startup window go directly to writer?

[wurzel]

As usual, when you take something away that got on every one's nerves, someone comes along and wants it back That's Sod's Law. The behaviour you are asking for is present in the current OOo X11 version 2.4.0 (and previous versions too). It was removed by popular request during development of the OOoAqua version.

Alex

[jimhof]

Thanks, Alex. It's only one extra step this way.

[dlangh]

Respectfully, I for one see no reason that this feature had to be removed. While I appreciate and have no problem with the way OO on the Mac now integrates all the applications into a single app, I don't understand why separate launchers couldn't have been retained to get to the specific apps more directly.

I did manage to find a way to run them separately by digging into the OO app folder and finding the soffice.bin binary and was able to use cmd line options to choose which app to start with, however only one icon appeared in the dock.

I think my biggest argument *against* taking this approach is that it is a deviation of every other product out there, even Apple's iLife doesn't work this way, and I might add, neither does Open Office for Windows or Linux.

You say that many users requested this, and I wouldn't argue that adding this feature was a bad idea, I would argue that a drastic change should be an addition, NOT a replacement for existing behavior for an application of this type...

I realize it's probably too late to change course on this, but I'm writing this in the hopes that the right people will reconsider and provide both methods, or a blended method that allows for both.

In my ideal world, you'd have a launcher for writer, calc etc. as well as a launcher for the app-chooser that currently exists. I'd also keep the fact that once in an app you can easily switch to any other from the file-menu pulldown, but I would have each app run as it's own distinct program so they would be seen on the dock as separate apps...

[wurzel]

In my ideal world, you'd have a launcher for writer, calc etc. as well as a launcher for the app-chooser that currently exists. I'd also keep the fact that once in an app you can easily switch to any other from the file-menu pulldown, but I would have each app run as it's own distinct program so they would be seen on the dock as separate apps...

Hi,
I believe that one of the Mac port developers, Eric Bachard, wrote a piece of documentation that described exactly how to do that with individual launcher icons for each app, that you could have in your Mac dock. However, I'm not sure where this documentation can be found, possibly on the francophone group documentation project at http://fr.openoffice.org, and AFAIK, it might only exist in French.

Alex

[TheGurkha]

it is a deviation of every other product out there

Interstingly though it is the approach adopted by IBM on their recent port of OOo into IBM Lotus Symphony.

[kabing]

Another work around is to put default templates for each module on your dock. Choosing them opens the module you want. The one exception to this is probably Base.

kabing

[stuporglue]

This really bugged me too, so I made some launchers. You can get them on my site, here:

http://stuporglue.org/openoffice.org-aqua-launchers.php

They're really simple, but at least now I don't have to do a two-step process to open them.

There are also command line launchers available on the same page.

Enjoy,
Michael Moore