Plug-ins: Java and OpenOffice 3.4 and LibreOffice 3.4

FrederickN

Please revise the documentation for word processor plug-ins; there's an inaccuracy in the Open/Libre/Neo-Office section.
(The page found at http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_installation_for_zotero_2.1)
This paragraph is inaccurate: "Windows OpenOffice.org users: A bug in Java support in OpenOffice.org for Windows may prevent the installation and use of the plugin for a small proportion of users. This is resolved in LibreOffice 3.4 or later. As OpenOffice.org development has largely stalled, you are strongly encouraged to migrate to LibreOffice."

LibreOffice 3.5 also has problems with Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on Windows, as shown in this thread on Bugzilla:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50371#c15
Comment 15 has a very clear, long discussion of how the issue has to do with Java performing messy upgrades/installations, which confuses both LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
This thread on ask.LibreOffice.org also references a Java problem with LO 3.5
http://ask.libreoffice.org/question/3927/java-not-working-libreoffice-355-zotero-for/

Further, it's also no longer accurate to say that "OpenOffice.org development has largely stalled", as Apache OpenOffice is now at 3.4.1

It seems like the spirit of open source is to provide full information to users and let them choose. It would be less biased to delete that whole paragraph and say something like, "Windows users should make sure they have a clean Java installation."

adamsmith

yeah, that should be updated - it's actually already contained in the troubleshooting instructions.
http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting#all_platforms

I'd stand by the assessment that LibreOffice is significantly more active, though, and I don't think the claim that Ooo has largely(!) stalled is biased information - the fact that AOO has managed to bring out one new version in the time LO has released three isn't exactly proof to the contrary...

FrederickN

There was a certain amount of open-source politics between OpenOffice (.org/Oracle) and LibreOffice; I guess I was supposed to be cheering for LO, but it all passed me by while I was teaching history, after I chose OO 1 over Word in 2004. I gather that Apache Foundation is dedicated to open-source, so hopefully AOO will be better than OOo, license-wise. And yes, it was stalled for a long time; but it didn't bother me as a writer, and to be fair, AOO 3.4.0 came out only in May of this year, so hopefully they're speeding up now that they've migrated from Oracle.

Yes, the troubleshooting instructions had those very helpful links -- and I should give credit where it's due! But they still advise OOo users to switch to LO, when the problem seems to be with Java. The risk I'm concerned about is that I'll spend time installing LO and learning its interface and then still not be able to use Zotero because my machine has a messy Java installation. I'd rather spend my time cleaning up the Java and stick with a word processor that's familiar.

I'm only a humanities grad student; smart, but not a computer specialist. I support open source, but don't feel technically confident enough to use Linux when my school and work use Windows. End users like me update slowly... even reluctantly... and like to stay with software they're familiar with. I noticed in the sticky post on documentation in the General forum that discussion favored using "LibreOffice" to refer to all OO forks. I'll understand, whatever terms you use; but I think there are quite a lot of people out there who still use OO 3.3 and will probably update to AOO 3.4 just because it's easy.

The main point I hope to make is that since both LO and AOO (and OOo) seem to have problems with Java, it would help Zotero users most to focus the documentation/troubleshooting less on switching word processors, and more on how to fix the Java.

adamsmith

I completely agree that the plugin page should be fixed.
I've found, though, that a lot of integration problems do go away when people switch to LibreOffice, though I don't know if that's still the case with the 3.4 release - the Ooo 3.2 and 3.3 releases were just particularly bad.
(oh, and do try using Mint or Ubuntu on a double boot - you really don't need to be a tech wiz anymore)

am_zot

Thank you for this very useful comments. I had a problem of extreme slowliness when I wanted to insert a zotero citation in LibreOffice -- about 2-3 minutes to respond, on a computer which otherwise loads Ubuntu in 1 sec and opens my session also in 1 sec. Strangely enough, this slowliness happenned only at the first attempt to insert a citation. I was using Open JDK Java Runtime 6. I switched to Open JDK Java 7, and the problem was solved.