AG logo DPPT for OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org logo

AKA

DOO WOP WOP

"Distributed OpenOffice.org - WithOut Powerpoint, WithOut the Pain"

Overview

Distributed-Powerpoint (DPPT) is a tool used to display Powerpoint presentations on the access-grid by synchronising remote sessions with a master. However Powerpoint, and by extension DPPT, is only available under the Windows platform. Additionally, DPPT has a number of issues hinging on its dependence on a particular unsupported version of MS-Java.

DPPT for OpenOffice is a system to allow users to participate in DPPT sessions from OpenOffice.org under non-Microsoft operating-systems (although it can be used under Windows, and has some advantages there too).

Download

DPPT-OO is available as either a tar.bz2 file or zip file 

Installation

Requirements:

DPPT-OO requires both a recent version of the Java Runtime Environment and OpenOffice.org1.1. Additionally, if you wish to compile from source you will require the Java SDK and the Ant build tool. All of these are available for free: DPPT-OO has been compiled and tested under Linux with the Blackdown java 1.4 suite and IBM's JDK 1.4.1, and with OpenOffice.org 1.1beta2 and 1.1RC.

Installation from binary:

To install the binary distribution, you first need to install a Java runtime environment. There are a number available for free from Sun, Blackdown and IBM. Describing the installation is beyond the scope of this document, but it generally involves unpacking the distribution, running the installation script and setting your path appropriately. The same applies to OpenOffice.org.

Grab either the .tar.bz2 or .zip file and unpack it into a directory. The binary is designed to be run from the resulting directory, so no further installation is required.

Installation from source:

First, make sure your OFFICE_HOME environment variable is set appropriately. Install a JDK and the Ant build tool, then grab the source distribution. Unpack this, 'cd' into the resulting directory and type 'ant dist'. This will compile the source and create a sub-directory 'dist' that contains the distribution directory with everything you need to run. Alternatively you can type 'ant tarfile' or 'ant zipfile' to create a full distribution file.

Running

Master:

The running of the master is a two step process. Firstly you must start the registry. This is done by entering the distribution directory and typing

The master OpenOffice.org process is started by entering the distribution directory and typing

where is the pathname of the PowerPoint file you wish use for this session. Relative pathname are fine.

Client:

To join a client to a session enter the distribution directory and type where hostname is the fully qualified name of the master, and <PPT-file> is the pathname of the PowerPoint file you wish use for this session.

Other options:

By default the sessions start-up in full-screen mode. To disable this edit the client or master scripts and add "-win" to the command-line.

Tips and Caveats

Compatibility:

PowerPoint is a undocumented proprietary Microsoft format. The OpenOffice.org programmers have done a good job reverse-engineering it, and all the PPT files we have tried have worked without problems. However, there will inevitably be cases where certain features of PowerPoint are unsupported or incomplete (this is true of the original Distributed PowerPoint, which doesn't handle animations well). If in doubt you should keep your presentations simple.

You should also note that if your PowerPoint presentations have spinning logos, sound effects, animations, dancing frogs and wacky cut-effects you are a bad person and don't deserve to use this software. Or any other software for that matter.

Fonts:

By default OpenOffice.org uses the default X11 fonts. As PowerPoint documents are usually made with Microsoft's proprietary fonts presentations running under OpenOffice.org will look inferior. To fix this you need to install these fonts and tell OpenOffice.org to use them.

The fonts are available from http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/, which includes instructions on installing them (note that you system may have them already packaged; for instance Debian includes the "msttcorefonts" package to download and install them).

Once they are installed run "spadmin". Select Fonts->Add, select the directory the fonts were installed in (usually in "/usr/share/fonts/"), and click OK. The available fonts should now be listed in the window. Click Select-All and then Add. That should be it.

Names of OpenOffice.org binary:

By default the main OpenOffice.org binary is named 'soffice' from its roots in StarOffice, and that is what is used in the startup scripts. However, if you have installed OpenOffice.org from a Linux distribution the binary may be named differently (e.g. Debian names it 'ooffice'). If this is the case you need to adjust the startup scripts appropriately.

Contacts

Comments and bug-reports should go to Steve Smith (ssmith -at- vislab dot usyd dot edu dot au)