openoffice 3.2.1 impress ppt/pps import error

English Applications
1

It would appear that novell openoffice 3.2.1.4 on opensuse 11.3 fails to correctly import pps/ppt files. Slide transition data is lost and this results in presentations without sound. This problem does not exist in openoffice from openoffice.org. openoffice from openoffice.org will play pps files with sound which will not play with openoffice from Novell. However the openoffice.org version requires JMF.

JMF is old and 32 bit. I have tested openoffice 3.2.1 from openoffice.org with JMF on a 32 bit 11.2 system and it works. I assume that JMF will not work with a 64 bit JRE. I also assume that it would be difficult to get a 32 bit jre to work with a 64 bit openoffice

FMJ is an alternative to JMF. It plays various types of audio including mp3 and wav. It is packaged for installation on 11.3. Does anybody know if this works in place of JMF with openoffice from openoffice.org on a 64 bit system?

2

I take it you are on about Power Point files?

Don’t have any so I can’t test one.
Do you have one we can test?

3

Yes pps & ppt are powerpoint files. OpenOffice claims to be able to play at least most of these files. I have many files that worked with an old version of openoffice on 11.1. These nolonger work on 11.3 but do work with the same level of openoffice on windows 7 and with the 32 bit version of openoffice 3.2.1 from openoffice.org.

Where would you like a file put?

4

While there are a number of threads on this subject (with no solutions yet), my experience is the majority of the power point presentations with sound do play sound in open office impress … its only a minority (that I would also like see work) that do not work. A couple of sample threads (at least one of which you already know about) :

5

It seems that this is a known issue. At least it going by @oldcpu’s comments. Now I think about it, I seem to recall testing some of @oldcpu’s files some time back.

I use dropbox for files but you can email it to me. I’ll PM you a email address. And if you like I will then host the file on my dropbox.

6

Hope this is OK with the OP
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/EZ-JEAOD-Lyon69LesCanuts.fs.pps

It’ll be tomorrow before I can look at it myself

7

Caf4926, I don’t understand that post ?

Was it to prove that that pps plays sound ? It does play sound on my openSUSE-11.3 with Impress.

There are powerpoint slide presentations which do not play sound on openSUSE-11.3, but thats not one of them (as that one works).

8

This is a new thread because it is a different question. This question is “does FMJ work with openoffice from openoffice.org 64 bit for sound”. I have spent very long time trying to get presentations to work as they used to work, and still works in Windows with openoffice 3.2.1. If you look at the slide transition data imported into the novell and openoffice versions of impress they are different. The reference to the sound file missing in the novell version. I have reported the problem on bugzilla but I expect a long wait before anybody even looks at the report. If I can get the openoffice.org version to work then the novell version goes and does not come back.

I have a laptop running 11.2 x86-64 that I have recently been using for testing. I now need it with a working version of openoffice but the pps issue is not an immediate problem on that machine. This limits testing to an old 32 bit laptop. I am trying to find out if I can use FMJ in place of JMF on an X86-64 system before I go the the trouble of uninstalling and reinstalling openoffice on one of the systems that I need.

FMJ seems to play mp3 & wav files without a problem. The sound is OK for mpeg video but the colour is strange. Red seem to come out blue. This may be a configuration setting.

Given that these pps files used to work on opensuse, are supposed to work and do work with openoffice 3.2.1 from openoffice.org on both windows and opensuse, I would like to fix my problem rather than add various work arrounds that will probably never be removed. If this means installing the openoffice.org version or trying to find an old novell version that will work then that is what I will do

I have done a lot of google searches and the only recent issues seem to be related to opensuse. This makes me think that this is novell/opensuse issue. I did a quick search on bugzilla and did not find anything relating to this problem. It is possible that I did not use the correct keywords and there is already a reported problem. If there really was not a reported problem then lots of people seem to be having problems without reporting them

9

I confess I don’t understand the specifics of your question. The power point that caf4926 posted http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/EZ-JEAOD-Lyon69LesCanuts.fs.pps works fine on my 64-bit openSUSE-11.3. Sound plays great.

Does that ppt give you problems ? If so, then I am suspicious of your PC’s config, as that works for me. Having stated that, I do find some power point do NOT play in Impress (but the example of caf4926 is not one of them as its sound plays fine in openSUSE-11.3 on my PC).

10

Heck ! I have to retract that for the moment. I tested on the wrong PC ! I tested on an openSUSE-11.2 PC. I’ll test on an 11.3 PC shortly.

11

I tested 15 different pps presentations on a 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 KDE4, and I can confirm that your observation wrt 11.3 not working while 11.2 does work is accurate.

I’m puzzling over this a bit, as I am certain I had at least one pps playing on my mother’s 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 PC when I was visiting her place in November (as that was one of my tests). But I can’t deny on my laptop (running a 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 KDE4) that not one of the 15 pps I tried, would play sound. I tried a brief tune of the audio backend (from using ‘auto’ to trying ‘oss’ ) and it made no difference (not that I expected it to, as I susect the problem is more along the lines of your assessment).

If you point me to the bug report, I’ll add my 2 cents as a user asking this be fixed.

12

Sometimes one gets better attention to a bug, if one raises the bug report on a developement openSUSE release.

So along those lines I tested the various .pps presentations (that have audio) on an openSUSE-11.4 M5 install. Its an LXDE desktop, but that should not matter, as I installed LibreOffice-3.3 and all its dependencies. Audio also did not work there. If you point me to the bugzilla bug report you raised, I’ll write a similar one on 11.4 M5 that LibreOffice-3.3. has problems with audio in pps files (and I will also reference your 11.3 bug report in what I write on 11.4 M5). I suspect that given LibreOffice is based on openOffice, that the problem could be the same. And I suspect such a bug report may get more attention if raised on LibreOffice on 11.4 M5.

13

I uploaded the OP’s file that was emailed to me.

FYI: It doesn’t work in my _64 SUSE 11.3 or Mint 10

If I press Esc. to get out of full screen it crashes

14

I have now tried it in Mint 9_64 and it works as for the OP, that is:
No sound in first slide, then all is OK

But it still crashes out when I use Esc to exit full screen

15

The bug is Access Denied

I am not very happy at the moment. I have spent about 40 hours trying to get something to work that worked in 11.1 I started with the sound config as sound does not really work as shipped in standard opensuse. With your help and the help of others my system can now play just about anything except these pps files. I have since spent two or three days investigating what openoffice is doing and comparing openoffice from opensuse and openoffice.org

I come back to my point that sound in opensuse is too difficult. Because it does not work ‘out of the box’, I and everyone else assume that a sound problem is misconfigured/installed sound software. As a result you have to spend hours configuring and testing the sound subsystem prior to looking at anything else.

I really don’t like the openoffice.org JMF requirement. I can’t see how it could work with a 64 bit jre and the installation is really nasty. I shall try FMJ and see if that is really a JMF replacement

Thanks

16

I don’t get any crashes just no sound

17

The plot thickens …

18

I added my 2-cents to the bug report, and later this week I will also write one on 11.4 M5 LibreOffice.

I don’t know if it will help, but I can relate to what you stated.

I started using Linux in 1998 and from 1998 to 2004/2005 time frame, the stubborn streak in me would have me bang my head for hours against the wall to solve a problem. Any problem. Sometimes I succeeded and solved the problem. Often the only result was the blood on the wall, and me lying senseless (and fuming) on the floor.

Around 2005 or so I joined the openSUSE forums and I changed my approach. From then on, when I had a problem, after a brief 15 minute to 30 minute effort of my stubborn “do it myself” streak failing (very very occasionially a couple of hours of time), I would stop banging my head, and instead post my problem on the forum and participate in the subsequent dialog.

This got hard to do (post the problem) when I became a moderator, as for some reason users tend to think moderators should have the technical answers (when in fact often we don’t … BUT often we don’t want to embarass ourselves on the forum with silly questions, so we tend to try on our own a lot 1st before posting a plea for help).

Sometimes when I posted a problem the solution was passed to me right away. Other times there was a dialog where it took some time for those giving me support to prove to me what I was doing wrong (ie I stubbornly refused to accept what was a working solution ! ) . And other times there was a dialog where it took some time for me to prove to others there was indeed a problem.

Often this post of my asking for help resulted in a fix. But sometimes it did not.

But I can say my knowledge has increased much more from 2005 to 2010 (when participating in the forum), than it ever did with the stand alone head banging from 1998 to 2005.

So if you can bear with our community not having an immediate answer to things that do not work, hopefully we can all work together to produce a solution, so that so many hours not need be wasted in the future.

My apologies for my openSUSE-11.2 vs 11.3 mixup (and hence initial totally unwarrented skeptism). Sometimes I tend to forget that I have not updated my primary openSUSE PC to the latest openSUSE version.

19

I have tested openoffice 3.2.1 from openoffice.org with JMF on a 32 bit 11.2 system and it works
Just wondering too,
You mean you removed the openSUSE version and manually installed o.o from o.office.org?

20

I have had lots of help. My point is that because of the way the sound subsystem is packaged, (or is not packaged), everyone has to spend a lot of time verifying that the sound system is correct before they can move on to a problem in any other package that may be using the sound system. I believe that there needs to be a better way of getting a working sound subsystem into opensuse