[Open Office] The dreaded HelpLinker NullPointerException and how to fix it

[Caolan McNamara]

On Sun, 2006-02-26 at 21:40 +0100, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
>
> Digging a bit deeper, the real problem seems to be in classpath -- unless 
> explicitly overridden in a property, classpath's 
> javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory.newInstance() returns a 
> gnu.xml.stream.SAXParserFactory; the SAXParser generated by it is a 
> gnu.xml.stream.SAXParser.
>
> gnu.xml.stream.SAXParser's idea of implementing getParser() is
> 
> public Parser getParser()
>   throws SAXException
> {
>   return null;
> }
> 
> Somehow this can't be quite right...
> 
> I guess the right workaround for now is to force HelpLinker to use an 
> org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl as opposed to a 
> gnu.xml.stream.SAXParserFactory -- any objections to this?

Hmm, I wonder if that's the sort of thing that the "alternatives" setup
on fedora addresses, i.e.

bash-3.1$ /usr/sbin/alternatives --display jaxp_parser_impl
jaxp_parser_impl - status is auto.
 link currently points to /usr/share/java/xerces-j2.jar
/usr/share/java/xerces-j2.jar - priority 40
/usr/share/java/libgcj-4.1.0.jar - priority 20
Current `best' version is /usr/share/java/xerces-j2.jar.

C.