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As a definite power user of StarOffice there are times when the tool doesn't really help, or actually makes it difficult to do your job.

Thankfully with an open extension framework other can submit ideas and create improvements for all.

A great example of this is DataPilot Tools for OpenOffice.org Calc.

Using DataPilot (similar to Pivot tables within Excel) in StarOffice can be a bit tiresome as it doesn't tell you what the range is that feeds the DataPilot, so if you suddenly have more data or what to make sure all the data is included you can't.

That's where this handy extension comes in, it gets added as part of the DataPilot toolbar menu and tells you:

• what the source data range is
• can update the source data range
• provides and option for refreshing all the DataPilots.

A lot has been happening recently with little spare time so here's some catch up items:

Sun announced last month that it has beta testing (internally) a cloud option within Sun.  So what's the Cloud appeal?  2 items really:

1. Allowing faster implementation - once cloud infrastructure and applications are in place, connecting or adding new services is much faster.

2. Reduces the infrastructure companies need to have on-site, reducing complexity and costs (hopefully). 

So how does this pan out for normal workers?  An example is utilising an extension for StarOffice/OpenOffice. It's very easy:

1. Install the extension for StarOffice:

2. Log in to the cloud, with ID and password.

3. Save and Open from the menu as you do normally:

It means I now have an online archive where I can access files from anywhere (so long as I setup and remember the cloud details) and no need to email them to myself or anything like that, or making sure I know what the latest version is. 

No, I'm not getting any crazy cravings, I'm talking about the old adage of a company "eating it's own dogfood" - in other terms using what it makes.

Working for Sun definitely has it's privileges, with early access to new software releases although that does have it's downside too. I discovered one recently when playing around with OpenSolaris 2008.11.

OpenSolaris is built around a packaging system, however for StarOffice 9, it's not available as a pkg yet, so I need to install via the .sh script. If it was a pkg, it would tell you about dependencies and automatically prompt to install them.

So in my case after a seemingly successful install, staroffice fails to start and crashes almost straight away:

bash-3.2$ cat /etc/release
                        OpenSolaris 2009.06 snv_106 X86
          Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                       Use is subject to license terms.
                           Assembled 28 January 2009
bash-3.2$
bash-3.2$ /opt/staroffice9/program/soffice &
[1] 4454
bash-3.2$ ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: libicuuc.so.3: open failed: No
such file or directory
ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: relocation error:
file /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.1/program/libvclsi.so: symbol
__1cHicu_4_0OLEFontInstanceRgetDynamicClassID6kM_pv_: referenced symbol
not found
ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: relocation error:
file /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.1/program/libtksi.so: symbol
__1cDvclJPDFWriterJAnyWidgetG__vtbl_: referenced symbol not found
ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: relocation error:
file /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.1/program/libsvtsi.so: symbol
__1cRVCLXImageConsumerLsetProperty6MrknDrtlIOUString_rknDcomDsunEstarDunoDAny__v_: referenced symbol not found
ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: relocation error:
file /opt/staroffice9/program/../basis-link/program/libsofficeapp.so:
symbol __1cDsvtNRoadmapWizardGResize6M_v_: referenced symbol not found
ld.so.1: soffice.bin: fatal: relocation error:
file /opt/staroffice9/program/soffice.bin: symbol soffice_main:
referenced symbol not found
/opt/staroffice9/program/soffice[134]: wait: 4461: Killed

[1]+  Done                    /opt/staroffice9/program/soffice
bash-3.2$

A quick search on libicuuc.so tells me that it's delivered in pkg SUNWicu, which is International Components for Unicode User Files, so all I need to do is fire up the package manager and install. No more staroffice crashes and I've learned something along the way!