README for StarOffice 3.1 for Linux, Beta 4, 04/04/97
=====================================================
NEWSFLASH: - statically vs. Motif linked binaries included
- you need at least libc.5.4.4 or newer.
Please read the following documentation carefully!
Star Division's Unix Group is proud to announce the availability of the
fourth beta release of StarOffice 3.1 for Linux.
Please note
-----------
You can find the installation instructions at the end of this
file. But, please, take the time to read the whole document.
To get the latest information about StarOffice, new beta releases, hints on
using StarOffice and general availability information, please send an
email with the subject "Linux" to:
info-linux@stardivision.com
If you have used the first beta of StarOffice 3.1 for Linux, please
see the sections "What is new in beta 4?".
What is StarOffice 3.1 for Linux?
---------------------------------
Star Office 3.1 is a suite of office productivity applications
containing StarWriter 3.1 (word processor), StarCalc 3.1
(spreadsheet), StarDraw 3.1 (graphics and presentation package),
StarImage 3.1 (image manipulation) StarChart 3.1 (bar-, pie- and other
charts) and StarMath 3.1 (formula design).
StarOffice 3.1 makes heavy use of common code in shared libraries,
therefore using relatively few resources for the level of
functionality.
How do I access it?
-------------------
You should be able to obtain StarOffice 3.1 from the same source you got
this file. StarOffice 3.1 for Linux can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/staroffice/
or mirror sites.
Who is Star Division GmbH?
--------------------------
Star Division, founded in 1985, is a German software development
company located in Hamburg, Germany. Star Division produces StarOffice
for several platforms (MS-Windows 3.x, MS-Windows 95, OS/2, Apple
Macintosh, various Unix variants such as Solaris, Sinix and Linux).
You can find more information about us on our web server at
http://www.stardivision.com/.
Is this a stable version?
-------------------------
No, not completely :-( That's why we called it "beta".
By sending in bug reports, you can help to make it more stable!
There is no warranty at all, neither expressed nor implied. To repeat,
there is no warranty for this beta version of StarOffice 3.1 for
Linux. So if it crashes your hard disk (which is unlikely), you
cannot sue us. You can be mad at us (or better: you can send us your
bug report), but you cannot sue us for defects in the software. If you
do not agree with this, you are not allowed to use StarOffice 3.1 for
Linux and must delete any parts of it on your hard disk.
So, please, do not start to write your master's thesis with StarWriter
3.1 before you have tested if it does what you need! We will try to fix
all reported bugs and will continue to make better versions available
as time permits.
How is StarOffice 3.1 licensed?
-------------------------------
This is not free software! It is not under the GPL, a Berkeley-style
license or any other freeware license. Please do not ask us to
make the sources available. As much as we would personally like to
(e.g. in order not to have to fix all the bugs ourselves :-) ), we
can't! The whole StarOffice 3.1 package is copyrighted by STAR DIVISION
Software-Entwicklung und Vertriebs GmbH, Hamburg, Germany.
This beta version will disable itself on September 1st, 1997. You will see a
warning message on standard error everytime you start a StarOffice 3.1
application as of August 1st, 1997. By that time, we will have made
available a newer, hopefully enhanced, version.
This version is and the final version will be free of charge for
non-commercial use. You have to buy a license for commercial use.
What can you do with StarOffice 3.1 for Linux?
==============================================
A lot of things! You may freely distribute this beta version and
even produce CDs from it as long as this file is always included with
the distribution and you give us credit. If you announce the
inclusion of the beta version of StarOffice 3.1 for Linux on the
cover of your CD (or elsewhere), you must clearly indicate that this
is a beta version. When asked, you must point people to the places
on the Internet where StarOffice 3.1 for Linux can be found or to our
WWW server.
Which languages are supported? What documentation is available?
---------------------------------------------------------------
StarOffice is a German product, which means that all texts such as
menu entries, manuals and online help are first written in German.
The translation works of on-screen resources should be nearly
completed by now. We provide German and English resources.
For this beta, french, italian and spanisch resources have been added.
In further beta versions we will probably make available Dutch and
other resources as well. Online help is currently only available in German.
There are manuals in Adobe PDF-format in German, which you will
find in the root directory of your StarOffice installation. You can
read these with Derek Noonburg's xpdf which you can download from
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/dn0o/xpdf/xpdf.html.
We will provide at least a shortened version of an English manual (in
PDF-format) as soon as possible. This will be announced via our web
site http://www.stardivision.com/ and comp.os.linux.announce.
You can set the language of the menus and dialog boxes like you do
with most Unix/Linux programs: Just set the LANG environment
variable.
What do I need to run StarOffice 3.1? On which configurations does it
run?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The first question is simpler to answer than the second. In any case,
you need an ELF system. We cannot and will not make available an a.out
version. Of course, you need X11 running. We decided to link
StarOffice against a newer version of libc. The consequence is, that
you need at least libc.5.4.4 or newer.
We got a lot of requests for statically versus Motif linked
binaries. This time we do provide them, so owning Motif is no longer a
prerequisite for using StarOffice. Please note, that the statically
linked binaries are bigger and need more RAM. You will experience a
performance hit, if you use them. Of course, dynamically linked
binaries are also available, for use with Motif 2.0 shared libraries.
We cannot name all the configurations StarOffice 3.1 for Linux will
run on as there are probably as many different Linux installations as
there are Linux users. We run it here for example on a Pentium 100,
running a somewhat modified Caldera Open Linux distribution with
2.0.25 kernel, a 5.4.4 libc.so, and XFree86 3.2. Many other
configurations will surely work as well.
What is new in beta 4?
----------------------
- The often requested statically vs. Motif linked binaries are added
- Lots of bugs have been fixed
- English language demo documents and templates (a few at least)
- The LANG environment variable now determines the defaults for papersize
and measurement units. Saying 'export LANG=us' if you use sh/bash or
'setenv LANG us' for csh/tcsh will get you letter size and inches as
defaults
How can I get help, report bugs, etc.?
--------------------------------------
There is a newsgroup at our NNTP-server which is dedicated to
questions and answers about StarOffice for Unix. The URL is:
news://starnews.stardivision.com/beta.staroffice.linux.english
or
news://starnews.stardivision.com/beta.staroffice.linux.german
The newsgroup is meant for general discussions, problems,
configuration issues, etc. Please do not post bug reports to the
newsgroup (see below). We will not respond individually to postings
(sorry, we simply do not have the capacity to do that), but will read
everything and post a FAQ or answer to some questions as time
permits.
In order to report bugs or make suggestions for new features,
different handling, etc., please use the mail
address
suggest-linux@stardivision.com
In addition, you can register your mail address at
info-linux@stardivision.com
in order to always get the latest information about StarOffice 3.1 for
Linux by email.
This way of online support is still in its experimental stages here,
so please feel free to send us your suggestions at
suggest-linux@stardivision.com.
Installation
------------
The setup procedure has changed a bit since the last beta, mainly
because two sets of binaries and two sets of demo documents/templates
didn't fit very well in our previous setup scheme. Until we come up
with a new setup scheme we'll simply pack everything into several tar
archives.
StarOffice 3.1 beta4 consists of six huge archives, but don't worry,
you do not need all of them. Here's a list of the archives and what
they contain.
1) StarOffice31b4-common.tar.gz (15.2 MB)
This archive contains all the shared libraries, resources, fonts and
other files which are required for a proper operation of
StarOffice. Get this one.
2) StarOffice31b4-english.tar.gz (1.8 MB)
English language demo documents and templates. Get this one if you
don't speak German :-)
3) StarOffice31b4-german.tar.gz (11.0 MB)
German language demo documents and templates.
4) StarOffice31b4-dynbin (3.9 MB)
Dynamically vs. Motif linked binaries. Get this archive if you own a
copy of Motif 2.0 for Linux.
5) StarOffice31b4-statbin (8.9 MB)
Statically vs. Motif linked binaries. Get this one if you don't have
Motif on your system.
6) StarOffice31b4-doc-german.tar.gz (11.0 MB)
German language manuals in pdf format. Useful, if you understand German
but not required for operation of StarOffice.
You'll need at least the StarOffice31b4-common archive, one of
StarOffice31b4-english or StarOffice31b4-german and one of the archives
with the binaries. Please do not try to install the content of both
language dependent tar-files.
Untar all the choosen archives in one directory. This should not be
your home directory but a system wide accessable directory like /opt
or /usr/local. StarOffice will be installed in a subdirectory called
StarOffice-3.1.
Each user who whishes to work with StarOffice-3.1 has to execute the
'setup' script which is located in the main StarOffice
directory. Choose the first installation option called 'User
Installation'. This will install all the necessary symlinks in your
home directory.
Please note that there are some more documentation files. Please read
these to find out about font installation, sound and database and
other issues. You will be given more information during the
installation process as well.
Remember: Each user has to run the installation program for himself!
We hope that you like this beta version of StarOffice 3.1 for
Linux and that it is useful for you. Please feel free to make use of
the communication facilities described above; we can only fix bugs or
help with problems that we know about. We will try to make changes to
other versions available on the Linux platform as soon as
possible. We, the developers of the Linux version, are Linux
enthusiasts like you. It's just that we pay our rent by developing
and selling software for other platforms... This may change, though,
if there is enough commercial interest in the Linux version. But
please, do not flood our marketing department with emails or phone
calls that you would buy it. They get a lot of these already. Try this
beta version, try the others that are to come, try the final
version. Then buy :-) Post to the newsgroups if you like it, and
inform us about what you do not like. There might be a way for us to
fix it (though we certainly cannot make any promises).
Your Star Division Unix Group
CREDITS
=======
StarOffice was developed by Star Division GmbH in several groups
(StarView, StarWriter, StarCalc, StarDraw).
It was ported to Linux by the Star Division Unix Group:
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer
Sven Dombrowsky
Eduard Gode
Michael Matthias Kern
Philipp Lohmann
Wilfried Pohl
Jens-Heiner Rechtien
Special thanks go to:
Marco Boerries, our CEO (for recognizing the importance of Linux)
Sebastian Hetze (for giving Kalle the opportunity to talk about
porting StarOffice to Linux at the 3rd International Linux Conference
in Berlin)
Dirk Hohndel and H.J. Lu (for helping with various technical and
administrative problems)
Astrid Huette (for helping with spreading the word about StarOffice
for Linux)
our quality assurance department
and, of course, Linus Torvalds and all the others for giving us such a
great operating system to port to.
Additional thanks to the many people taking part in the process of
tea and coffee production. We'd never have made it without you !