Comments on: OpenOffice.org 2.4.x Dark Theme Workaround With Ubuntu 8.04

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:56:30 +0000

Or you could just go to Tools > Options > Appearance and change the background to something more pleasing to the eye.. like white.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:32:51 +0000

lol
when copying, watch out for the utf8 quotes.

By: CJ

CJ — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:39:20 +0000

Yes Yes YES! Thank you! This has been driving me nuts.

By: Adam Stovicek

Adam Stovicek — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:32:57 +0000

@Iv I don't have much familiarity with KDE but if I recall correctly it isn't using the same theme engine. To be honest, I wouldn't know where to begin without some Google searches. I would think KDE-Look.org would be the best place to start.

By: Iv

Iv — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:12:50 +0000

Hi!
I have the same problem shown above, but under kubuntu 9.10 (using KDE as visual env)
I’ll be grateful if you provide me with some help.

10x in advance!

By: Archlinux user

Archlinux user — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:50:58 +0000

This is a fantastic tutorial that solves a long-standing problem for me. Thank you so much.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:11:16 +0000

Thanks! Adding the environment variables to my launcher shortcuts worked great within Ubuntu 9.10 with OO 3.1.

By: AAS

AAS — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:36:50 +0000

Hey,

it works fine, even with OO 3.0 Great work!

Thank you!

By: Nick Baskerville

Nick Baskerville — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:38:56 +0000

im having problems with this,

when i run “sudo env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc /opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice” openoffice dosnt load in my dark system theme, instead it appears to load in human however, human is for some reason also dark and therefor OO is still unusable

i tried su3y’s idea (using OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=none) but this had no effect on OO’s appearance,

any other ideas?

By: su3y

su3y — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:36:34 +0000

I found out another workaround for this annoying bug that should work with *any* dark theme including Overglossed and Slickness-Black.

The trick is not to force OO.org to use a *different* (brighter) GTK2-theme with the GTK2_RC_FILES variable, but to make it use *no* theme, so that it will have the standard look.
This can be done by using the OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP variable.
Simply open /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice in a text editor and enter the following line in the very beginning of the file, after “#!/bin/sh” :

export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=none

Save & close the file and you should be set!
Alternatively, if you like KDE, you can use

export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=kde

to get a KDE skin. But be careful not to use this unless you have installed kdelibs3-default-style (not sure if there are more packets/dependencies required but you know what I mean).