sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/PPA_OpenOffice.org.list

Copy and paste the following deb lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

This website’s formatting may split those lines. Each line from “deb” to “main” should be unbroken. Change jaunty in each entry to either intrepid or hardy accordingly for your own Intrepid or Hardy installation.

CTRL-O to write to the file.
CTRL-X to exit.

nano ppa_keys

Copy and paste the PGP Public Key Block for the OpenOffice.org Scribblers PPA from HERE.

CTRL-O to write to the file.
CTRL-X to exit.

sudo apt-key add ppa_keys

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Answer yes when prompted. Wait for the packages to download and set up and enjoy OO.o 3.1 on your Hardy, Intrepid, or Jaunty Ubuntu installation.

As an added bonus, if you don’t already have the full OpenOffice.org suite, as some unnecessary packages are left off of the install CDs, just tell apt-get to get them:

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org

The OpenOffice.org Scribblers PPA had been supplying OO.o 3.0, but only for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex until now. Now us die-Hardy (pun intended) users can enjoy OO.o 3.0.1 using the update system instead of dealing with any confusing process, even the one I posted here not too long ago.

You can see the OO.o Scribblers PPA page at Launchpad for more information, but to make this quick and to the point, here’s what needs to be done. Hardy and Intrepid users can follow this same process with only one change noted below.

Add the PPA repository to your sources.list file. We’ll do this graphically. Go to System > Administration > Software Sources. Click on the Third-Party Software tab and click the Add… button.

Place the PPA’s repository address in the APT Line box, and click the Add Source button. Hardy users should use:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Intrepid users should use:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

You’ll see it listed at the bottom of the list. The picture below is mine. I have quite a few repos I follow, so your’s probably won’t look so crowded.

Next we need the PGP key to authenticate the packages for this PPA. Just recently, Launchpad has added PGP signing keys to all the PPAs in order to improve security. The OO.o Scribblers PPA key can be found at http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0×60D11217247D1CFF

We’ll make a temporary text file containing the key. Open a text editor (Applications > Text Editor) and copy/paste the entire key into a new document. Save it to your home directory with a name you’ll remember. Consider it a temporary file that you can overwrite in the future for other keys. I’ve pasted their PGP key below.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: SKS 1.0.10

mI0ESXanRwEEAOTPu1sTcJChTjkA9LkIh6WqiBgPzxNY2p8w18Qt/cE3ev4VyjiIadZtr+fh
C+kuRRQuRinLV+MzeD7Od3uqyR1plc90lqUeLeKJMgXfCoGMmKwng0qD2gpevIvEEpdlmsRo
1hutsyRxAL3o/NfFpovg6dWC27Y1Vwwma8UIL5wXABEBAAG0K0xhdW5jaHBhZCBQUEEgZm9y
IE9wZW5PZmZpY2Uub3JnIFNjcmliYmxlcnOItgQTAQIAIAUCSXanRwIbAwYLCQgHAwIEFQII
AwQWAgMBAh4BAheAAAoJEGDREhckfRz/4QoEAOJ429PsO5oi1xsnX/lraHACYpHNvk4KVghu
cY2p6J8M0WTTlfls96jRYGlDBDuyZcfW0W+VJlaiu28u2Y9zEnXTWHMlIk6PiOmLPxXofgDf
lKRqvBFYdRD8+33TBeD6u6qajNOLYTL08dnqCfVqmJTGZxqXTmYIOF1NdIs0KlF/
=1y5I
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Going back to the Software Sources window, we’ll import that key. Click on the Authentication tab and click Import Key File… button. Highlight the file you just saved with the text editor and click OK. You should then see it at the bottom of your Trusted software providers list.

Additional Precautionary Step: Lastly, click on the Ubuntu Software tab and make sure the universe repository is enabled as the PPA packages will need to acquire a handful of hardy packages as well. Thanks to Tony Land for experiencing that aggravating problem.

Click on the Close button and you’ll get a window explaining that information about your software is out-of-date. Click on Reload and the package information will get downloaded. Now you should see the familiar update icon in your task bar. Clicking on it will bring up the Update Manager and it should show you a list of everything that needs to be updated including the new OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 packages. Click on Install Updates and enjoy OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 on your Hardy or Intrepid installation.

And while looking at the current list of available software listed under Third-Party Sources, I noticed a listing for OpenOffice.org 3.0. The downside is that it’s only available for Intrepid Ibex users, but it offers a much easier way of installing OO.o 3.0.0 onto Ubuntu 8.10 desktops without having to hack it on.

Other new sources include Ubuntu Chinese, Amarok, and Banshee.

UPDATE: A bugfix was released only two days later bringing Ubuntu Tweak to 0.4.3. It addressed using Ubuntu Tweak without having compiz installed. It also provided additional translations for Bulgarian, Czech, Faroese, French, German, Italian, and Polish languages.

What follows are the original instructions. Users are advised to go to PPA For OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 For Hardy/Intrepid for a better solution.

It’s a good bet that OpenOffice.org won’t be making its way into the Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy Heron repositories. A quick look at the package information for openoffice.org shows that Ubuntu devs, while keeping up with security fixes, don’t backport OO.o to previous Ubuntu releases. Considering that I’ve decided to stick with Hardy Heron on my personal laptop until the release of 10.04, I don’t feel like being stuck with OO.o 2.4.1 until then. Not that 2.4.1 isn’t any good. I use it quite a bit, which is why I’d like to stay up-to-date with it.

Since the word got out early that OO.o 3.0.0 was being distributed to the mirrors, I wanted to see if I could get it installed before the official announcement is made. Surprisingly enough, it was easier than I had anticipated. There was only one small snag which was easy enough to fix.

Step 1

First we need to get the new release from the mirrors. Chances are, even after the announcement is made, the download option that OpenOffice.org presents you with may be for the RPM archive with JRE included. Since Ubuntu is Debian based, this will present a difficult challenge. Fortunately, they also offer DEB archives through the mirrors. JRE isn’t included, and not needed, in them but can be obtained through Ubuntu’s repositories if you wish to install it later.

The OpenOffice.org mirror list can be found HERE. Choose the closest location and preferably a HTTP link. Some web browsers don’t work well with FTP and even fewer users have a FTP client installed. Once at the mirror, click on stable/ and then 3.0.0/ and you will be presented with a list of archives. To download the release, click on OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz for i386 installations or OOo_3.0.0_LinuxX86-64_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz for AMD64 installations.

Step 2

Open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and change to your download location. Extract the files with:

tar xzvf OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

or

tar xzvf OOo_3.0.0_LinuxX86-64_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

You will have a new directory named OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358 with a DEBS/ directory inside. Navigate to that DEBS/ directory.

cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/

Inside will be all of the DEBs that you’ll need to install OO.o 3.0.0.

Step 3a

There are two options for Step 3. If OO.o 2.4.1 isn’t installed, proceed to Step 3b.

If you already have OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 installed through Ubuntu’s repos, you will need to remove it. One of the 3.0.0 packages (debian menus) has a conflict with one of the 2.4.1 packages, openoffice.org-core. Removing openoffice.org-core will also remove OO.o 2.4.1 from your computer.  Remove OO.o 2.4.1 by using apt-get at the command line:

sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org-core

You’ll see apt-get prompt you for removing the other 2.4.1 packages as well. Just hit enter and apt-get will do the rest. Proceed to Step 3b.

Step 3b

Install OO.o 3.0.0 using dpkg. You could try installing each DEB one by one, but dpkg will figure out the correct order for you and do it all automatically. Just issue the following at the command line and watch the magic happen: (UPDATE: More concise command used)

sudo dpkg -i -R .

All the OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 apps can now be launched from the Applications > Office menu. The first time you launch one, you’ll be presented with a setup screen for your personal details and to register with OpenOffice.org.

Now For The Bad News On Dark Themes

Some dark themes still won’t work well with OO.o 3.0.0. You can still apply the workaround I posted HERE, but you’ll need to change the directory locations accordingly. This version of OO.o 3.0.0 installs to a different directory than where Ubuntu installs 2.4.1. Those changes are detailed at the end of the workaround instructions.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Also, this should work for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid as well, but there’s still a possibility that OO.o 3.0.0 will be included in the final release of Intrepid. If that is the case, I would rather have it installed from Ubuntu through the repositories with the package managers. UPDATE: OO.o 3.0.0 did not ship with Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Just follow the steps above. UPDATE UPDATE: You can use the new Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 to have an OO.o 3.0.0 source installed that will update your Intrepid system easily.

Removing OpenOffice.org 3.0

If you no longer want OO.o 3.0 installed, removing it is rather simple. At a command line, just enter the following:

sudo apt-get remove ooobasis3.0-* openoffice.org3* openoffice.org-debian-menus

Afterwards, to put 2.4.1 back use the following command:

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org

Difficulty With ubuntu-desktop

I’ve seen some people stating that the ubuntu-desktop gets removed when removing the OO.o 2.4.1 packages. It really shouldn’t as they are listed as recommended packages and not dependent for ubuntu-desktop. However, in response to a comment below, I experimented with re-installing ubuntu-desktop after OO.o 3.0.0 was installed and detailed it below.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is expected to be announced this Monday, October 13, in Paris as OO.o celebrates eight years of development. The latest version has been seen available for download at various mirrors for all of the supported platforms and source codes.

Improvements to OpenOffice.org include supporting the Open Document Format 1.2 standard, having the ability to open files made with Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac OS X, importing PDFs into Draw, support for the Mac OS X Aqua platform, and multi-screen support for Presenter.

Cautionary note: The software community is speculating about the announcement and users should exercise caution if they decide to try out 3.0 before it has been made official.

The Ubuntu forums had this asked and answered with a workaround, but that broke with the new release of 8.04 Hardy Heron. I couldn’t find an updated workaround and between desperation, aggravation, and a lack of patience, motivation set in and I went about to find one of my own.

Short Overview

First a short lesson. The shell scripts that run all of OO.o’s applications are found in the following directory:

/usr/lib/openoffice/program/

Each of the OO.o applications has its own shell script.

• swriter – OpenOffice.org Word Processor
• scalc – OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet
• sbase – OpenOffice.org Database
• simpress – OpenOffice.org Presentation
• smath – OpenOffice.org Math
• sdraw – OpenOffice.org Drawing

Each of these executes one main shell script, soffice, while passing it an argument that defines what application you’re planning on using. It’s this file we’ll be using in our workaround

In order to tell OO.o what theme to use, we set an environment variable pointing to the gtkrc file of that theme while we execute the script for that program. For instance, the following launches OpenOffice.org Word Processor with Ubuntu’s Human them:

sudo env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc /usr/lib/openoffice/program/swriter

Two flaws with this is 1) because you need to use root privileges to set environment variables, you inadvertently run OO.o applications with root privileges as well, and 2) it’s a hassle to have to do this manually. You could edit each of the OO.o shell scripts and include the above environment variables.

#!/bin/sh

cmd=’dirname “$0″‘/soffice
exec “$cmd” -writer “$@”

…would become…

#!/bin/sh

cmd=’dirname “$0″‘/soffice
exec env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc “$cmd” -writer “$@”

But that would be a hassle to change them all back if you change your mind in the future. I thought it best to edit just one.

Workaround

The directions that follow assume that you are running Ubuntu 8.04 with OpenOffice.org 2.4.x installed. The same workaround should work with other distributions as long as directory locations are corrected to match your specific operating system. As donoterase has commented below, his OO.o installation directory is different.

Step 1:

First thing I did was rename the soffice file. Open a terminal and at the command line and just move it.

sudo mv /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice1

Step 2:

Now, make a new soffice file.

sudo gedit /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice

Step 3:

Paste the following shell script code and save the file.

#!/bin/sh
env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice1 “$@”

Step 4:

Next, make it executable.

sudo chmod +x /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice

Step 5a:

There are two options for step 5. The quick and easy way is to rename the binary file. The original soffice script sets a basename variable for the binary’s file name based on the script’s file name. Since we renamed the script to soffice1, we need to rename the binary to soffice1.bin. Braver souls can opt for Step 5b.

sudo mv /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice.bin /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice1.bin

Step 5b:

If you’re comfortable enough, you can edit the line in the original soffice file instead of renaming the binary. While Step 5a works, I’d rather keep the binary name as is just in case there’s a dependency for it which I haven’t come across. Find the following line of code in your now soffice1 file:

sd_binary=’basename “$0″‘”.bin”

Comment that out and add a similar line below and save it.

# sd_binary=’basename “$0″‘”.bin”
sd_binary=”soffice.bin”

Conclusion

Now, each and every OpenOffice.org app should launch using the Ubuntu Human theme to display the correct layout coloring. I had mixed results when using other themes. Some worked well while others didn’t work at all. The dark theme that I’m using, Overglossed by TheRob, gives me dark-blue panel colors with some themed areas, but high contrast icons. Layout color was incorrect. Slickness-Black, also by TheRob, forces OO.o applications into their default high contrast mode. For myself, I’ll stick with the Human theme so I can enjoy the graphs in my spreadsheets the way they were intended.

Now, this assumes that nothing about your OpenOffice.org installation will change any time soon. This workaround could very well break with a future update to OpenOffice.org. It would be very likely to break between Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex. But that’s why we call this a workaround and not a fix.

Keep in mind as with any fixes or workarounds, you do so at your own risk. However, if something needs clarifying, don’t hesitate to ask.

OpenOffice.org 3.0.0

If you were successful with installing OO.o 3.0.0 and would like to apply the above to it, just replace /usr/lib/openoffice/program in the instructions above with /opt/openoffice.org3/program which is default non-Ubuntu installation directory for OO.o 3.0.0.