Open Office Technology

In OpenOffice v2.0.3 and earlier, the path configuration settings in org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Default and org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Current are considered deprecated but continue to be used by OpenOffice. In addition to these settings, OpenOffice v2.0.4 and later use the settings in org.openoffice.Office.Paths.

The interaction of these settings is complex. The following describes how these settings work, then offers a recommendation on how to configure these settings.

Three of these path settings, Backup, Temp and Work, are "single paths" which means they reference only a single directory. For these settings, the values in org.openoffice.Office.Paths are ignored, and only the values in org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Default and org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Current are used. These three paths can be configured the same as in OpenOffice v2.0.3, with one exception: the settings cannot be completely locked down by marking the value "Final" (see Note below).

For each of the remaining path settings, OpenOffice builds the path list by concatenating the following:

(a) the names (not the values) of the keys under org.openoffice.Office.Paths/Paths/NamedPath['Pathname']/InternalPaths. These names reference and installation paths and are considered read-only. They cannot be edited by the user and are not shown to the user. The current release of OpenOffice-Enterprise does not allow these internal values to be changed, but this limitation is intended to be addressed in a future release.

(b) the value in org.openoffice.Office.Paths/Paths/NamedPath['Pathname']/UserPaths

(c) the value in org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Current/Pathname

(d) the value in org.openoffice.Office.Paths/Paths/NamedPath['Pathname']/WritePath

These four values, each of which can be a list of paths, are concetentated and duplicate paths removed. The last path in the resulting list is considered the "WritePath" which is where new user files are written.

If a user clicks "Default" in the Tools | Options | OpenOffice | Paths dialog, this entire list, with the exception of the internal paths defined in location (a), is replaced by the contents of org.openoffice.Office.Common/Path/Default/Pathname.

Note: The current release of the OpenOffice-Enterprise software does not allow the path settings in OpenOffice v2.0.4 or later to be completely locked down so that users are unable to change them. When a value is marked "Final", the setting is partially locked down. The user can temporarily change a "Final" setting using the menu Tools | Options | OpenOffice | Paths, however the changes are not saved to disk and the path reverts to its "Final" value when OpenOffice is restarted. This limitation that a path setting cannot be completely locked down so it cannot be edited is intended to be addressed in a future release. Note however that while individual path settings cannot be completely locked down, an administrator could prevent editing of all path settings by disabling the Tools | Options | OpenOffice | Paths menu. For instructions, see Hide configuration options.