FAQ

General questions

What is EuroOffice?

EuroOffice is the name of a free and open-source OpenOffice.org derivative and a set of accompanying free and non-free extensions.

How is EuroOffice different?

Some of our current and future extensions require functionality that OpenOffice.org does not currently provide. We implement these in EuroOffice and hope that OpenOffice.org will one day take these changes and integrate them to OpenOffice.org.

Currently EuroOffice includes the addition of support for the Adaptive Interface and a fix for Python extensions that was created by OpenOffice.org, but unfortunately did not make it into 2.3. The current version of EuroOffice is based on OpenOffice 2.2.1.

How do I get the source code?

We are planning to provide a version control system access to our codebase, but currently we can only provide it as a large archive or as a set of diffs against the OpenOffice.org codebase. Please contact us at support@multiracio.com if you would like to have it right now.

What extensions do you provide?

Currently the extensions that we have made publicly available (and also free) are EuroOffice Map Chart, EuroOffice Solver, EuroOffice Dictionary and EuroOffice Adaptive Interface. You can also download them from the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository .

Technical questions

How do I install an extension?

Step 1: Download the extension you would like to install from the downloads section or the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository. If your browser offers to option to open the file, accept it and skip to step 5! (You can also open the file from your file manager.)

Step 2: Start OpenOffice.org (or EuroOffice).

Step 3: Start the Extension Manager from the Tools menu.

Step 4: Click "Add..." and pick the file you have downloaded.

Step 5: Read the license agreement and click the "Accept" button once you have scrolled to the bottom.

Step 6: Restart OpenOffice.org. If Quickstarter is enabled, this can be harder than it sounds, because closing the OpenOffice.org window will not terminate the program. You will have to temporarily disable the Quickstarter to enable the extensions to install. The procedure is explained in the picture below. You will know if you did it right, if you see the OpenOffice.org splash screen when it is starting up. Also our extensions will offer to install their help files after the successful restart.

How do I use them?

The help pages (available through the about box) will do their best to explain the usage of the extensions, but nothing speaks as clearly as an example. Especially these annotated examples for EuroOffice Map Chart and EuroOffice Solver.

What languages are the extensions available in?

All of our extensions are available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Hungarian.

If your language is not among the above mentioned seven, but you would really like to see a localized version, you have two options. You can contact us with your request and see if we can accomodate it, or you can do the localization yourself! There are languages for which we would be hard pressed to find a translator ourselves, but all our extensions use Java Property Resource Bundles for the localization data. You can find the DialogStrings_en_US.properties file in the extension, localize it using an appropriate editor (we use PRBEditor), and send us the modified file. You would at the very least make us and a number of users speaking your language eternally grateful!

How do I set the user interface language?

The user interface of the extensions is automatically set to match the language of the user interface in OpenOffice.org. If such a localization is not available, English is chosen as default. There is no way to switch to a different language after installation.

What do I do with all these XML files and stuff?

The examples for the EuroOffice extensions are in OpenDocument format. This is the file format of OpenOffice.org and is a standard valuing interoperability with other applications. To this end they are technically made up of a number of XML files packed in a ZIP archive. You should not unpack these files. Simply save the example with the ODS extension (for OpenDocument Spreadsheet) and open the file from OpenOffice.org Calc.

The same goes for the EuroOffice extensions themselves. OpenOffice.org extensions are ZIP files with ZIP, UNO.PKG or OXT extensions (OXT is recommended for new extensions). They contain a number of files that make up the code, data and metadata of the extension. You should not however extract these files. Save the extension as a file with the OXT extension and navigate to this OXT file (for example EuroOffice_Map_Chart.oxt) in the OpenOffice.org Extension Manager.

I get an error message mentioning Python!

This not quite informational error message pops up in two cases:

• If you are installing in OpenOffice 2.3 or earlier and have already installed other Python extensions, you will get this message. Upon starting the Python loader OpenOffice.org changes environmental variables that conflict with its own configuration files, and the next time it tries to start it up it will fail with this error message. A fix is already in CWS pyunofixes4, but it did not make it to 2.3 (it is included in EuroOffice however so this will not happen with our version). However, a workaround is available.

  Workaround: In extension manager disable all of your extensions (or only those that are in Python), restart OpenOffice.org (see How do I install an extension? for some notes on restarting) and enable them again.

   

  Note: We have built in a workaround into our extensions, so this error should no longer appear when you install more of our extensions. However it can still occur if you install our extension after you have installed another Python extension.

• If you have Python installed on your system, the PYTHONPATH environment variable can cause this problem by interfering with the Python bundled with OpenOffice.org.

  Workaround: Create batch files in the "OpenOffice.org 2.3/program" folder such as

  set PYTHONPATH=
  swriter.exe %*
  

  and use them instead of the .exe files in desktop and start menu shortcuts. Opening a document by double-clicking on it in your file manager will still be a problem without extensively replacing file associations. An alternative is of course to remove the PYTHONPATH environment variable and only set it when you are starting Python (even then it may not be necessary).

How do I update extensions?

The recommended way to update your EuroOffice extensions is by using the update mechanism in the Extension Manager. Because of the problem with the Python loader in OpenOffice.org 2.3 (see here) this procedure is a little more complicated than it should be. Please read the instructions below.

Step 1: Start OpenOffice.org and open the Extension Manager from the Tools menu. If you have EuroOffice, the bug is fixed in it and you can skip to step 5!

Step 2: Disable all extensions (disabling Python extensions is sufficient if you know which ones they are).

Step 3: Restart OpenOffice.org (as detailed here, except you should leave Quickstarter turned off, because you will have to restart again in step 6).

Step 4: Open the Extension Manager again.

Step 5: Press the Update button and install the updates.

Step 6: Restart OpenOffice.org (as detailed here).

Your updated extensions should be working perfectly now!

The Adaptive Interface does not work!

The Adaptive Interface only works in EuroOffice and not OpenOffice.org. In OpenOffice.org you can check out its settings window and the about box, but it will not actually do anything useful.

The extensions do not work in StarOffice!

True, because StarOffice does not support Python extensions.

I have bought a Professional EuroOffice extension. How can I download it?

Normally your download starts automatically after the payment process. If you pay through a method that does not clear immediately (such as eChecks), you will be sent an email with the download link when the payment has cleared.

In any case after the first download we will send you another email with download details for the next time. Our download links are single-use and are always sent in email to the address you have used with PayPal. This method makes a single click download access possible for our customers without the need for registration and login and without the danger of download links leaking to the internet.

Email is not 100% reliable though. It is possible that an email we sent to you will be delayed or will not arrive at all due to network errors. If you suspect that this may be the case please visit our Customer Downloads page and have a new email sent to you.

How can I change the email address to which you send the download links?

If you still have access to the email address to which we are currently sending the links, then you can use the Customer Downloads page.

If you no longer have access to the old email address, then please contact support@multiracio.com.

Are there identification codes in your extensions?

The Professional EuroOffice extensions have a random string of characters embedded in them. You can find this string in the description.xml file inside the extension bundle. This random string is associated on our servers with your purchases. When you use the update feature in the OpenOffice.org Extension Manager this code is sent and a single-use download link is returned from which OpenOffice.org can download the most recent version if necessary.

This code is necessary, because otherwise there would have to be a publicly available URL from which the most recent version of our Professional extensions could be downloaded.

I need more help! My question was not answered here!

Please contact us at support@multiracio.com so that we can help you and possibly add your question to the FAQ to help others!