How To: Multi User Star Office

This is much easier than fiddling around with the Pre and Post Login Rexx scripts.

The following is a simple batch file called SOff52N.exe.cmd that starts Star Office 5.2 (Win32 version) for User nicki

chcp 850
copy K:\users\nicki\soffice.ini E:\Office52\user\soffice.ini
set PATH=k:\odin\system32;k:\odin\system;E:\Office52\program;%path%
set BEGINLIBPATH=k:\odin\system32;
pe E:\Office52\program\SOFFICE.exe
copy E:\Office52\user\soffice.ini K:\users\nicki\soffice.ini



Here is the
version for another User. This is called SOff52P.exe.cmd and as you can see is not very different from the User nicki version above.

chcp 850
copy K:\users\losepete\soffice.ini E:\Office52\user\soffice.ini
set PATH=k:\odin\system32;k:\odin\system;E:\Office52\program;%path%
set BEGINLIBPATH=k:\odin\system32;
pe E:\Office52\program\SOFFICE.exe
copy E:\Office52\user\soffice.ini K:\users\losepete\soffice.ini


The object of the exercise in the above files is to copy the current User soffice.ini file from the current Users' Home Directory to the Directory that Star Office expects to find it's INI file in, overwriting any existing soffice.ini file. Star Office then starts with the correct settings for the User and when closed writes the Users' soffice.ini file to the Users' Home Directory thus saving any changes that the User may have made to their settings.

If I was using the OS/2 version of Star Office 5.1 the batch file would not need the Odin related statements and presuming that Star Office has entries in Path and LibPath in the config.sys file I would expect the batch file to look like this:-

copy K:\users\losepete\soffice.ini E:\Office51\user\soffice.ini
SOFFICE.exe
copy E:\Office51\user\soffice.ini K:\users\losepete\soffice.ini

Well that has simplified things a little.
Now it becomes very clear that the first line is used to copy the User soffice.ini file and overwrite any existing soffice.ini file in the destination directory  E:\Office51\user\.
The next line starts Star Office - with the Users' own soffice.ini file.
The last line is used to copy the soffice.ini file to the Users' Home Directory - this happens after Star Office has closed so any changes made are saved.

The only bits that need changing are the Drive:\Directories involved and the User name. I'm fairly sure that most people will see and understand how to implement this on their own system if they wish.

There are probably a few applications that can be made "Multi User" using this technique.
Please feel free to use, adapt, modify these batch files to your own needs.
Please post results, especially successful ones, of trying to make other applications "Multi User" using these, or similar, batch files.

I do not know how Sun would react to this I must admit. Sun supplies Star Office as a "Single User" application for Windows and OS/2 but "Multi User" for Linux so I don't think they would get uptight about anyone converting the "Single User" versions into "Multi User". Lets face it, No matter how many Users you have only ONE gets to play at a time!

Happy Individual Visual Desktops :-)

Pete        email: losepete@cwcom.net