Planmaker etc hang after start for ~30 secs

[ricky_f]

In the field I'm working on a system with no installed printer and no printing. Planmaker (as well as the other FO apps) basically works as expected... but after starting the program it hangs for ~30 seconds. Afterwards all is working.
The relevant portion of pmlog.txt seems to indicate that this problem is a ~30 sec timeout to do with printing:

Code: Select all

...
[   782ms][     0ms]: LoadSysFonts End
[   782ms][     0ms]: LoadSysBitmaps
[   782ms][     0ms]: InitVideo
[   782ms][     0ms]: IconInit
[   789ms][     7ms]: comInit: UpdateSMPrinters
[ 30601ms][ 29812ms]: comInit: CmdLine                <---- 29.8 secs later
[ 30601ms][     0ms]: CmdLine <>
[ 30601ms][     0ms]: comInit: Address
[ 30601ms][     0ms]: comInit: InitCountry
...

This is a Debian 13-based system with the latest version of FreeOffice installed.

[SuperTech]

The approximately 30‑second hang at startup occurs because SoftMaker Office attempts to communicate with the system's default printer and hits a timeout.

From the log you provided, the UpdateSMPrinters call takes 29.8 seconds. This suggests that the application needs to query the printer driver for certain metrics when starting up.

The simplest workaround is to set a virtual printer (such as a PDF printer or CUPS‑PDF) as your system's default. This gives the software a local, always‑available device to query, completely bypassing the network timeout issue.