Fixing the OpenOffice.org grammar glitch in Ubuntu Hardy
Posted by Peng on 3 May 2008
Last year Nanci posted that there were grammar checking tools for OpenOffice.org, the wonderful open source office suite, that takes care of one of the most glaring omissions and deal breakers in people looking for a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. Unfortunately there seems to be a bit of a glitch with it in Ubuntu Hardy. Luckily there is an easy way to fix it.
The problem is a simple one. The LanguageTool software requires Java to work, but just having Java installed isn’t good enough. You need the openoffice.org-java-common package in the main repository for OpenOffice.org to be able to use Java, and it’s too big for the distribution CD so most of us don’t have that crucial package installed. It’s possible that while upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy that package may have been deleted rather than getting updated, but either way I’m seeing many people are running into this problem. Luckily it’s an easy problem to resolve. Simply install the missing package either in Synaptic or enter the following command in Terminal
sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-java-common
entering your administrator password when prompted for it. Then simply fire up OpenOffice.org once the installation is done and you can use your grammar checker in OpenOffice.org.
I apologize for not postying this sooner. I actually discovered it while writing my article on Mac4Lin for Full Circle magazine and should have passed the information along here sooner. Big thanks to calc and ckakman for pointing out the needed file.
