Open Office ADM's

[cookie_monster]

Anyone using these ADM's to deploy Open Office or are there some free ADM's available?

 

Downloads | Open Office Technology

 

 

Also is anyone here using Open Office in a secondary or across 500+ desktops? If so what issues have you come accross (I'm thinking SIMS).

 

Thanks.

[featured_spectre]

sims doesnt work with OOo yet, however when I was at a training there were 4 schools there who used MS office only for SIMS and we were badgering them to try to get it to be available to work with OOo. Seems like they may have too to meet demand as we were not the only ones to do the badgering!

[cookie_monster]

I'm surprised they don't it would be a big future selling point if they could say compatible with OO, I know quite a few schools can see big savings if they dropped Office but feel locked in.

[Azhibberd]

We are currently using Open office on around 400 machines, although we still use office for all the staff machines because of sims.... Somethings you can't avoid i guess unless they do or have changed it to be compatibile although i'm not sure myself as i dont really touch sims just make sure they can logon thats as far as i go with it. Although the problems we have got so far was with the database side of things i can remember a teacher complaining they needed access because of the database on open office doesn't do validation or some part of validation that the coursework required.

 

Other than that not really too many problems a few ones where people couldn't find thing and that... and u still get some people saying its rubbish but then you get some who love it but its just reistance to change really.

 

Although on the note of ADM's we arn't actually using the Open office ones, as there wasn't really anything we felt the need to control apart from we have all users auto save as .doc etc so that its auto saved as basically the normal office equililent so students sending it home dont have any issues. but todo this we have an its an extention that i make auto install with the office which was all done over batch script which i just put in the startup script of all the machines so deployed open office without moving If you want when i'm in work tomorrow can post the script/files i used.

[Azhibberd]

Also quick side note i forgot to mention.. we also deployed(with batch script) out Scribus to replace publisher

[cookie_monster]

@ Azhibberd, are you deploying OO using group policy then altering settings using the script?

 

So Scribus, is it a decent replacement for Publisher (I know Publisher is a bit poor) e.g. does it offer all required features to fulfil the syllabus?

[Azhibberd]

Yep deployed using a batch script that checks if its installed on pc bootup, if its not installed it installs itself, Although basically as we havn't put the money out for the ADM's we have very little control over it really.

 

Well in all honestly i don't use publisher very often at all only when a member of staff or student has a problem but i mean i've never really liked the program, and well its the same with Scribus really, although we havn't had any complaints about it in all honest so it can't be too bad, although the only problem we do have is it doesn't open publisher files (Ye that was interesting although) there is a guide to kinda convert them... Which we sent to all staff, Although we did the change over in the summer hols so most people didn't notice

[Azhibberd]

Just incase anyone is interested on how we have deployed it without using the ADM files, below is the batch script I threw together.

 

@echo off

 

IF not EXIST "c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\" msiexec /qn /i "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\openofficeorg30.msi"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Common.xcu" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\Common.xcu" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup.xcu" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\Setup.xcu" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\setup-calc.xcu" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\setup-calc.xcu" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\setup-writer.xcu" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\setup-writer.xcu" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\setup-impress.xcu" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\setup-impress.xcu" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\DisableFirstStartWzd.oxt" xcopy "\\server-here\msi$\OO3\auto\DisableFirstStartWzd.oxt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\" /H/Y

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Common.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Common.xcu" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Common.txt"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup.xcu" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup.txt"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-calc.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-calc.xcu" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-calc.txt"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-writer.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-writer.xcu" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-writer.txt"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-impress.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-impress.xcu" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\Setup-impress.txt"

 

IF not EXIST "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\DisableFirstStartWzd.txt" "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg.exe" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\DisableFirstStartWzd.oxt" >"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\DisableFirstStartWzd.txt"

[cookie_monster]

Nice one. Did you have to launch that bat file manually? I've managed to get OO to install in testing using the msi and a transform file and it seems ok so far.

 

The big problem still is that it doesn't play very well with Access files which the A level groups still insist on using

[User3204]

The reason that Scribus doesn't open Publisher files is because Microsoft have locked the format, unlike .doc,.xls, etc which are open (for Microsofts definitions of open).

 

Basically, no-one is allowed to use anything other than Publisher (or PubViewer if there is such a thing).

 

Our ICT Teacher has pushed all programming towards Java, away from anything MS use, as he knows how to use it. I think the course allows it, and may even suggest it. So hopefully I will be able degrade (nice word there) the use of MS Office, and make the main Applications Open Office.

 

So those ADM files will be useful, I'd not seen any previously, and wa getting to the stae where I had thought I might have to build my own, which is not something I wanted to have to do.

[cookie_monster]

I'm pretty sure that .doc,.xls files are also completely closed which is why so much time goes into reverse engineering them, the reason that Publisher hasn't been done is it's really not all that popular so there isn't an engineering group willing to spend the time reverse engineering the format. The .docx xml format that first appeared in Office 2003 and 2007 is the 'Open' standard.

 

Anyway not to worry hopefully we can move away from Publisher at some point, I might take a look at Scribus.