OOo freezes when the `Export to PDF` button is pressed from the toolbar (it works fine from the file menu)

The problem is actually different...

Both methods of selecting `Export to PDF` cause OpenOffice.org to deadlock for about 30 seconds before showing a "save as" style prompt. They both work, but the problem is the 30 second deadlock.

Hmm, could you tell us your Cpu speed, such as 1.8GHz, and Ram size, such as 512Mb? Also if you could tell us your linux-swap partition's size that might help. Hopefully this could just rule out some possibilities or perhaps point to an easily implemented cheap answer :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

CPU speed: 2.3 GHz
Cores: 2
Memory: 3gB (usable)
Swap: ~3gB

That rules out those as possibilities for causing the problem. It's a fairly high end laptop.

lol, 'fairly' high end lol, that beats my desktop machine lol !! :))) err, oh i do have 2 cores too tho heheheh

Hmmm, that's odd. I didn't get any freeze when i just made a blank pdf. I made another with a screenshot in but i think that was quite a light weight pdf too & still no trouble. Do you get the same problem trying to export a blank page as a pdf? I assume you are on Jaunty (9.04) and using OpenOffice 3.0.1? Even on other versions you shouldn't be getting much delay i think - it's not like adobe acrobat! lol

Good luck with this
Regards from
Tom :)

I am using Jaunty and OOo 3.0.1.

The problem is still there with a blank document.

I tried running `/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice.bin -writer` from the terminal to get the output, but all it said was "** (soffice:20497): WARNING **: unable to get gail version number" right when it started up. It didn't print anything when it was frozen before prompting to export/save the file.

Also, the problem occurs between when I tell it to export to PDF and when I tell it where to save the file. When it prompts me to save the file, I still have the option to export to XHTML, so the problem is not with the mechanism used to convert it to PDF. The problem seems to be a deadlock of some sorts.

does "dmesg" tell anything?

Okay, I figured out the problem. I don't know what caused it, but I figured it out.

It's not a bug in OpenOffice.org. It's a bug in nautilus, or some backend of nautilus.

This actually turned out to be a problem in every single application that had a save dialogue; I just happened only to use the save dialogue when exporting to PDF in the recent past because most of my documents already existed (ctrl-s in a document that already exists doesn't bring up the dialogue).

Anyway, I restarted my computer and now everything is back to normal. However, this does bring up the issue of file browser dialogue boxes being blocking. They really shouldn't freeze an application while they load. Unfortunately, this seems to be a problem with every single program in the gnome desktop.

Perhaps use Synaptic Package Manager to reinstall (don't bother to uninstall as it would cause mayhem and confusion no doubt ;) , just reinstall should do the trick). Also in the File or Edit menu of Synaptic should be a "Fix broken packages" option

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

There's another "Repair broken packages" option in "recovery mode" which you can get to through the bot-menu, it's usually the 2nd Ubuntu choice in the listing there. Most actions in there are worth doing about once a month or so anyway although "fix x-server" just drops your graphics setups back to defaults which isn't always what you want ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)