Openoffice 2 and Gnumeric help files not working SOLVED

Message

bdika · Post by **bdika** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:29 am

Hi:

Approximately 3 weeks ago, I emerged Openoffice.org 2 (not the bin file) and gnumeric. I am unable to access the help files in either program. When I click on the Help menu item in Openoffice I get a dialog box that says "The help system could not be started. The help file for this topic is not installed." When I point to the Help Contents menu item in Gnumeric, the status bar says "Open a viewer for Gnumeric's documentation", but when I actually click on it, nothing happens.

I thought it had something to do with my use flags which include kde -gnome. So I emerged Gnumeric again with gnome and gtk. But this didn't help.

I am new to Gentoo and have checked these forums for this problem. I found someone who had this problem with the help files after emerging Openoffice 2 but unfortunately he never got an answer to his problem http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-43 ... ffice.html. He must have given up on Gentoo because when I asked him if he had solved the problem he said that he hadn't and had gone back to SimplyMEPIS.

Can anyone point me in a direction that will help me to solve this problem with the Help functions on these programs. I like Gentoo but need the help functions in my programs.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Bill Dika

Cybersorcerer · Post by **Cybersorcerer** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 7:29 am

Hi,

please check the contents of the following directory :

Code: Select all

ls /usr/lib/openoffice/help/en

Are the help files in there ?

bdika · Post by **bdika** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 1:07 am

Thanks for replying Cybersorcerer.

The help files are not there. Does that mean that there is a use flag missing for when I emerged it? I thought I had the standard flags, optimized for KDE. I just installed Gentoo (on my laptop) a couple of weeks ago by following the installation docs.

Should I add a certain use flag?

Thanks.

Regards,
Bill Dika

Cybersorcerer · Post by **Cybersorcerer** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 1:02 pm

Hi,

sorry for answering late, i was travelling and had no access to my email .... anyway i am not aware of any special use flags. In case it helps here are the USE flags i used .

Code: Select all

app-office/openoffice-2.0.1-r1  USE="java kde -binfilter -eds -gnome -gtk -ldap -mozilla -xml2*" 0 kB

bdika · Post by **bdika** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 8:12 pm

Hi Cybersorcerer:

Hope you had a good trip!

I emerged Openoffice again last night with your USE flags. I had to manually download a java file (I think it was a documentation file), and the emerge of Openoffice took approximately 6 hours on my laptop but the Help is now working.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to my problem.

I wonder if java is necessary for the help to work in Openoffice? Because the inclusion of java and your other exclusion flags seem to be the main flag differences from what I initially used for my emerge.

In any case it is now working. Thanks again.

Now I want to try and get the help working in Gnumeric. My desktop uses Gnome and the Gnumeric help works on it. When I click on About in the Gnumeric help viewer on my desktop, it says it is Yelp 2.12.1 "A documentation browser and viewer for the Gnome desktop". So I may have to install some Gnome components to get it working, something that I am not too crazy about doing.

I mainly use Openoffice Calc, so the main problem is solved. I can do without Gnumeric if necessary.

Regards,
Bill Dika

Cybersorcerer · Post by **Cybersorcerer** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 7:30 am

Hi Bill,

AFAIK inclusion of the java use flag only adds java support to Openoffice and i don't think the other flags i use have done the trick. I believe
there may have been a problem with your first emerge of OO and the re-emerge has solved this problem.
I am a very happy KDE user since years and i haven't even tried gnome yet (and probably never will ). I fear you are on your own with
gnumeric help problem, but i searched the forum and found the following thread :

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-44 ... -yelp.html

looks like you might have to re-emerge yelp with the deep option, but i might have completely missunderstood your problem!
I am a gnome dummy in the end

bdika · Post by **bdika** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:05 am

Thanks Cybersorcerer, the emerge advice in the link you provided worked. Thanks to you, I now have the Help function working in Gnumeric on my laptop.

Regards,
Bill Dika

Cybersorcerer · Post by **Cybersorcerer** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:28 am

Hi Bill,

great ! Please add [SOLVED] to the original header of your post.