In OpenOffice.org 2.3 a new Java GUI Installation Wizard will be introduced to simplify the installation process on Unix platforms. In a first step, this wizard will support the installation of Linux-RPMs and Solaris packages. Additional package formats will follow.

Preview Installation sets with the Java GUI Installation Wizard are available for Linux, Solaris-Sparc and Solaris x86. They can be downloaded from:

http://installation.openoffice.org

Please feel free to download and test this installation sets and give us feedback. This will help us to improve the quality of OpenOffice.org 2.3.

On Linux the installation will be possible without root privileges. This can be achieved by using a local RPM database. Therefore it will be possible to install many OpenOffice.org next to each other.

An installation set consists of the Java Installer included in a jar-file, an executable file “setup”, that searches for an installed Java and starts the installation and of course of packages (RPMs or Solaris packages) that contain the Openoffice.org files. Additionally we introduced “XML package description”-files (.xpd). Each package requires one xpd-file. Below is a code snippet of the xpd file for the “OpenOffice.org Writer” package. It contains tags for the visible module name and module description, size, checksum, order of appearance in “Module Selection”-dialog and some other installation relevant information more. Most tags are easy to understand:

<package name="gid_Module_Prg_Wrt" parent="gid_Module_Prg">
<display type="show">
<sortkey>100</sortkey>
<default>true</default>
<showinuserinstall>true</showinuserinstall>
<dontuninstall>false</dontuninstall>
<isupdatepackage>false</isupdatepackage>
<name lang="en_US">OpenOffice.org Writer</name>
<name lang="de">OpenOffice.org Writer</name>
<description lang="en_US">Create and ...</description>
<description lang="de">Erstellen und ...</description>
</display>
<installunit type="rpm">
<size>7094</size>
<md5>23b0f16b953530f64d08152d63c26d7a</md5>
<name>openoffice.org-writer-2.1.0-196.i586.rpm</name>
<fullpkgname>openoffice.org-writer-2.1.0-196</fullpkgname>
<pkgversion></pkgversion>
<subdir></subdir>
<relocatable>true</relocatable>
</installunit>
</package>

During startup the Java Installer reads all available xpd files, creates the component tree, that is offered in the “Module Selection”-dialog and checks the existence and version of the packages. Therefore it is possible to add or remove packages dynamically, even after an installation set was successfully created.