I think my problem may be a different one after looking into it. However this snippet from http://ooo.ximian.com/hackers-guide.html may be relevant:
6.10 It always crashes in sal_XErrorHdl You are a victim of asynchronous X error reporting; export SAL_SYNCHRONIZE=1 will make all the X traffic synchronous, and report the error by the method that caused it, it'll also make OO.o far slower, and the timing different. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]