OpenOffice setup

OpenOffice is included in Ubuntu installation by default.

However, when starting oowriter I kept getting the following message

 javaldx: Could not find a Java Runtime Environment! 

oowriter is working, at least the basic things, but I read that for some advanced stuff one might need Java runtime environment. I installed sun-java6-jre, but that did not solve the problem. Finally, the solution was:

  sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-java-common

This takes care of that :)

Spellchecker for another language

Adding Latvian dictionary is fairly easy. Run oowriter,

go to File -> Wizards -> Install new dictionaries..., follow the directions and you have it. Remember to restart oowriter.

The catch: If you get a "too small of a window" at some point, disable visual effects in Ubuntu (8.04): go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> None.

Compatibility with Microsoft Office (Word)

You may want to add MS fonts to get better appearance of the documents in OOWriter that were created with MS Word:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts