OpenOffice 1.1.1 starts & installs in German on English

[j.drake]

Well, fortunately "Textdokument" is something within my inferential capabilities, and I can guess at most of the rest, but I can't honestly say that I know what a Zeichnung is.

[user unknown]

Zeichnung: drawing

http://dict.leo.org/

is a onlinedictionary which says: chart, diagram, painting, ...

[Craig2]

can you test in the console and report:

echo $LANG
echo $LC_ALL
echo $COUNTRY

and

env | grep de
env | grep DE

Thanks to Knoppix, there are a lot of current and former windows users who are trying Debian/Gnu/Linux for the very first time. A big thanks goes out to Klaus, Probono, Fabian Franz, Christian Perle, and others who either have helped with Knoppix, or who take the time to explain how things work, and help newbies on the mailing list and in these forums. I'm not a techie. I simply like Gnu/Linux. I've been using it for a few years now, but I don't have the resources to have a box to experiment with. Every setup I've had up to and including now has been a recovery of something else, and ongoing attempts to hold on to data that I don't want to lose. So I haven't been able to get into the basics of how the systems really work.

I still consider myself a newbie. Until I build a system using Linux From Scratch, get some better experience with Debian, build and use another system from slackware, get to know the command line better, get to know shell scripting better (or at least start), and get to know other areas better, I'll always consider myself a newbie. From a newbie's point of view, I'd like to point out the following for the more experienced users out there offering help on the mailing list and in these forums:

Just as you have learned html, scripting, and other areas by copying, so do we. The person who asked for me to check a few settings above, and others who ask us to do the same, please remember this: It will be very helpful for you to also include a few sentences as to what exactly it is that you are asking us to look for. As a further example, for those of you familiar with Suse's Yast configuration tool, Yast is a great configuration tool. Thanks to that tool, in the past, I was able to keep systems running without any problems, including file servers, web servers, nis servers, nfs servers, and more. But I always had trouble understanding exactly what the tool was doing. It was obviously running scripts according to my entries, but that was behind the scenes. While I could have, and should have, taken the time to learn each step of what I was doing with the entries, nothing would beat actually showing the command line entries, and shell scripts in action, as the entries were made. There should have been an option that allowed me to see the resulting command line entries that were run each time I pressed the "enter" or "apply" button. Note that this is not a criticism. By telling us why we are doing what you ask, and what it is exactly that we are doing, you are helping us to learn, and helping us to help others when the time comes.

This problem with OpenOffice is similar. I know it's a German switch, flag, or file that is triggering the installation to install in German. I also know I should be checking paths, but I can't remember how to do that right now.

What I have discovered, is that in the user directories that are not knoppix user (craig2 for example), I have a lot of dot configuration directories and files that have "de" on the top line or near the top line of each file, with other languages below them. Some files end in dot desktop ".desktop" and there are others. I've changed some to "en" where I see "de", and others I've either rm'd or I've mv'd them to a backup file. I'd like to erase all of them, but I'm aware that OpenOffice stores some user data within its own directories, instead of the user's Documents directory, and I don't want to lose data. So what I've done instead is to move the directories into backup directories, so that there are no OpenOffice dot directories anymore in the user's directories. Since I've been using Knoppix for a while, I have Directories for OpenOffice641, OpenOffice1.0.3, OpenOffice 1.1.0, and OpenOffice1.1.1 Those have all been moved to backup directories.

I've also discovered that in /etc, I have the following file:

24 May 12 06:15 language-de -> /KNOPPIX/etc/language-de

and the file contains:

# #!/bin/sh -- This should not be executed, but sourced.
# This file was installed by the package user-de and contains the
# settings for German speaking users

# If you just want Umlauts and accents (also in Mutt), but all the
# messages in English then uncomment the following entry.
#LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
#export LC_MESSAGES

# This sets the locale to German/Germany.
# You might want to try de_AT etc. instead
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
export LANG
# If you want a German GNOME Desktop as well, you also have to set
# LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 in /etc/environment, which is a good idea anyway!!!

# If you should prefer English manpages
# then uncomment the following two lines.
#MANOPT='-L english'
#export MANOPT


# A couple of programs use this as a default for the MIME charset.
MM_CHARSET=UTF-8
export MM_CHARSET
__________________________________________________ __

I know that the above is wrong. I rebooted, so that would explain today's date. So what file should I have there instead? I believe I should have one that is language-en instead, correct? Should I delete this file?

Just to answer another question, this is the disk I'm running:

knoppix@ttyp4[lr15]$ ls
KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN
knoppix@ttyp4[lr15]$ cd KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN/
knoppix@ttyp4[KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN]$ ls
KNOPPIX-CHANGELOG.txt KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN.iso.md5 knoppix-cheatcodes.txt
KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN.iso KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN.iso.md5.asc packages.txt
knoppix@ttyp4[KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04-EN]$

And I of course checked the md5sum, even though bittorrent does that as well.

Can someone who knows better what he or she is doing, who is having the same problem with languages in OOo, do a search for any files which have "de" in them, possibly separated from other letters with a - or _ or other non letter character, and see if this is the problem?

The Textdokument or whatever someone else reported was seen by me in Knoppix 3.3 also, and possibly earlier versions as well, but since I could figure out that it was for text documents, it was still usable. There were other problems in other menus as well, but the office suite was mostly installed as English, and it was usable. Something happened with 3.4 that wasn't happening in 3.3 and earlier releases, although in 3.3 I still had a German (complete) install in user craig2, but knoppix user installed in English, so I could still use the suite, even though Textdokument, and a few other menu items were in German.

[user unknown]

When I try to help someone to solve a problem, I'm sometimes detailed, and sometimes really short. I might be tired or simply lazy, but of course I never know how much the user already knows.
I assume at least that the user knows 'man, whatis, apropos'.
Well - in your case it might not be very useful, since the manpath points to german manuals.

env shows a lot of your settings, such as LANGUAGE.
grep searches for a token - in this case for 'de'. DE isn't as popular as US, but since the question was about the german language, I thought you might get this on your own.

I guess I better reply shortly than not at all.
---
I don't feel competent to solve your problem.
Running linux for 8 years now, I always had problems with language- and locale-settings.
I switched from distro to distro, from suse to redhat, to halloween and to peanut and knoppix - and setting up the keyboard and the fonts for the console and for X11 was mostly problematic and not completly solvable, though reading lots of manuals, leading from here to there and back again -
everyone was using a different solution so I gave up.
Now, this knoppix-release worked out of the box - but since I use german, I may not tell you how to switch away.

Perhaps there is a bootoption lang=en_US or similar?

[Craig2]

When I try to help someone to solve a problem, I'm sometimes detailed, and sometimes really short. I might be tired or simply lazy, but of course I never know how much the user already knows.
I assume at least that the user knows 'man, whatis, apropos'.
Well - in your case it might not be very useful, since the manpath points to german manuals.
<snip>
I guess I better reply shortly than not at all.
---
<snip>
Perhaps there is a bootoption lang=en_US or similar?

As I stated, it wasn't meant personally. Your help was definitely appreciated, and pointed to some other areas that I needed to refresh myself on, and areas that other newbies should study on. I simply took the opportunity to point out a more appreciated way of answering a question for newbies to learn on. Often, list posts are terse, and don't explain why someone is asking what they're asking, or what effect the resulting entry would have, etc. I just posted the response as a reminder that we like to, and need to, learn while we are doing, and the best way for that is to understand ourselves what it is you are trying to find out in order to answer the question. That's it, nothing more. Due to fatigue, and a thousand other reasons, this isn't done all the time, nor can it. But a friendly reminder asking to do this is good, don't you think?

I'm going to try rebooting with the lang=US flag. I already have this in my saved configuration, but it may make a difference for OOo. I'll add it to knoppix myconfig=/dev/hda1 dma flag that I use to boot.

I also tried rm'ing the OpenOffice directory in my home directory, then running soffice again. It popped up an error message telling me the installation was broken, did I want to repair it. I clicked yes, and then was presented with the registration box written in German. I declined registration, and OOo started in German. So that didnt' work.

I've been looking at the /usr/bin/soffice file. I've been trying to get hints where it looks for Language or locale settings, but it seems to be correct. I'm wondering if I can edit the file as a workaround, and force it to en-US directly in the script, instead of the script checking locales/lang in other directories. Is this possible?

This is the the installation script I have (the whole thing doesn't fit, this is from /usr/bin/soffice):

#!/bin/bash
PROGRAM_PATH=/opt/openoffice/program
CHECKMEM=""

# Show logo in background
SCREEN="$(xdpyinfo | awk '/dimensions/{print $2; exit 0}')"
X="$(expr ${SCREEN%%x*} / 2 - 235)"
Y="$(expr ${SCREEN##*x} / 2 - 160)"

# Quick visual feedback
xloadimage -quiet -geometry 0x0+$X+$Y -delay 140 /opt/openoffice/program/soffice-startup.gif >/dev/null 2>&1 &
xpid="$!"

[ -x /usr/bin/checkmem ] && CHECKMEM="/usr/bin/checkmem 80"

# Language/Locale settings
[ -z "$LANG" -a -e /etc/sysconfig/i18n ] && . /etc/sysconfig/i18n
export LANG
USELANGUAGE="${LANG%%@*}"
USELANGUAGE="${USELANGUAGE%%_*}"
case "$USELANGUAGE" in
de|ch|at)
USELOCALE=de-DE
;;
nl)
USELOCALE=nl-NL
;;
C)

[user unknown]

It might work or not work.

I thought you were allways running from cd?

It looks as if the installer is reading it's settings from /etc/sysconfig/i18n so you should print it to the screen:

cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n

# my output:
#
LANG="de_DE@euro"
COUNTRY="de"
LANGUAGE="de"
CHARSET="iso8859-15"
XMODIFIERS=""

# yours should probably look like this:
LANG="en_US"
COUNTRY="us"
LANGUAGE="us"
CHARSET="iso8859-1"
XMODIFIERS=""

but I'm not sure, whether the installer will FIND apropriate en_US - files to install.

And note: I'm not sure about the boot-option, whether it is 'LOCALE=...' or 'LANG...' or something similar, but the help-screen should mention some option.

[Craig2]

knoppix@ttyp9[knoppix]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LANG="C"
COUNTRY="us"
LANG="C"
LANGUAGE="us"
CHARSET="iso8859-1"
XMODIFIERS=""
knoppix@ttyp9[knoppix]$

I looked at this just a little while ago. Don't know what Lang="C" is, but when I saw COUNTRY="us" and LANGUAGE="US", I figured it was ok. Maybe C is canadian. if canadian english is the setting, that's certainly better than German, and something I can live with. I'd change it, but should it be US? or us?...and so on.

So if someone has a working install of OpenOffice.org in US English, and has a knoppix 3.4 English CD, I'd be interested in what your $ cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n reports.

Yes, I'm running from CD. But I can edit /etc and other directories because I have a persistant home. As for editing the script, don't know if I can, but checking the location, it doesn't appear to be a link from the cd, so I should be able to edit it.

[Craig2]

Yes, I'm running from CD. But I can edit /etc and other directories because I have a persistant home. As for editing the script, don't know if I can, but checking the location, it doesn't appear to be a link from the cd, so I should be able to edit it.

Let me correct myself before someone else does. Persistant home has nothing to do with editing /etc. Kick myself for that one. Anyway... I can edit some files in some directories because I working from an underlying installation of a different distro, and working from the ramdisk. If I understand it correctly, I can edit /etc because /etc is in my ramdisk, and as long as I save my configuration after the edits, I can edit /etc files and it works. As for data, I can save knoppix user's data in /home/knoppix, but then I have to save the configuration file. I have a couple of other users, one is craig2, and when running applications as craig2, I don't have to save my configurations for craig2 because craig2's home is on a partition on my hard disk, not on a ramdisk. I also have on the same partition, a directory for knoppix2, where I can save data to for knoppix, and not have to worry about remembering to save my configuration or risk losing the data. That doesn't help with configuration files which are automatically saved in /home/knoppix on the ramdisk though.

Hope that helps for an understanding of my setup.

The soffice script, I'm assuming, has been placed into /usr/bin, on the ramdisk, during startup. So I should be able to edit it, save the configuration, and it should work.

And for other newbies out there, when planning on editing files, before you start, do a ls -l, so you can see if the file is actually a link to a file on the cd, instead of on the ramdisk. If it is on the cd, you can't edit it. A workaround is to copy the file to the ramdisk from the cd, in the correct directory, removing the link. Then save the configuration, see if it still works (backup the link), then edit away, then save the configuration again. Should work.

[pstoddard]

I had the same problem and I just uninstalled OOo that came with the disk and installed a fresh copy downloaded from OOo's web site.

Seemed to fix it for me and I still have launch capabilities from the K menu.

[Craig2]

I had the same problem and I just uninstalled OOo that came with the disk and installed a fresh copy downloaded from OOo's web site.

Seemed to fix it for me and I still have launch capabilities from the K menu.

This won't work for people running from the CD. And if there's a klik recipe for OOo, that will give all the benefits, but also all the drawbacks, of that different setup (everything in a single user's home directory, instead of in the different directories such as /usr/bin and using the libraries and everything else from the original install. This prevents additional users, unless those users also install OpenOffice into their own directories as well (double disk space). Not normally an issue with a live cd, but with knoppix user, quite a few people with single user systems have an additional user as themselves. This also brings to mind problems with out of memory warnings, due to the large size of OpenOffice, if its downloaded as a klik recipe on a live cd setup (check the forums, I won't go into the details of the out of memory warnings, though I had one myself and I have 512 MB Ram and 2 Gigs of swap, with the ramdisk able to fully use the 2 Gigs of swap).