OK, messed around a bit and did NOT solve the problem but can tell you this:
-I made a new user "ootest" and ofund that she exhibited the same behaviour as my regular user: -no menus or dialog text visible form within xfce3, xfce4 or enlightenment -works fine in gnome 2.4 (I don't have kde working right now, so can't check there). -OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=none /usr/bin/oowriter does NOT help me in those environments. However: from within gnome, using OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=none /usr/bin/oowriter REPRODUCED THE BUG from within gnome! so I wondered: what exactly does the variable OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP do? What other values can I assign it? Can I use it to figure out where the problem lies? Anyway, seemed hopeful -- pls get back to me if this seems helpful. matt
