OpenDocument

  • How to automatically print or convert to PDF, MS Office or other formats OpenDocument files

    The script and tricks in the ODF scripting section of this website show how to create office-ready texts, presentations and spreadsheets automatically, in the OpenDocument format, which is a worldwide standards. This is all many people need to work today. Sometimes, however, it’s still necessary to either print those documents, or exchange them to somebody in other formats, like PDF or those of the older releases of Microsoft Office (newer releases of this program are already partially compatible with OpenDocument through free plugins, so if your partners have those versions they should really use those plugins, instead of bothering you with requests for drug-like, legacy file formats, but that’s another story).

  • How to make OpenDocument slideshows out of plain text files

    Slideshows are extremely popular as presentation and educational tools, but have a couple of serious problems. The first is readability: let’s admit it, many slideshows are almost unusable. One of the secrets to useful slideshows is terseness. Each slide should contain only a few short points or pictures which summarize the key concepts you want to transmit to the audience with that part of your talk.

  • Why and how the OpenDocument format can save you a lot of time!

    The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an internationally recognized open standard for digital office documents whose importance has also been acknowledged by Microsoft. ODF is good for a lot of reasons I have already explained in Everybody’s Guide to OpenDocument. However, there is also one more reason why ODF is great for everybody who must produce a lot of office documents, one that will be the subjects of many posts on this website: ODF is really simple to generate or edit automatically.

  • How to import multiple pictures into a text document with OpenOffice or LibreOffice Writer

    This is a way to import multiple pictures into an empty text with OpenOffice Writer, one picture per page, with a database report. install the Sun Report Builder extension create a database in the same directory as the pictures enter or import in the database the file names of the pictures make sure that those names don’t contain special characters or spaces use absolute, full path names to step around a bug in the builder

  • Final Notes from the ODF Plugfest in Granada

    The second day of the Plugfest followed the same general scheme of the first one (covered in a separated page): a non-technical introduction followed by lots of hacking, feature analysis and product anticipations. A representative of the Spanish Ministry of Presidency, Miguel Angel Amutio Gomez, started the day explaining the crucial points of the Spanish law 11⁄2007: the right for everybody to use whatever digital technology they like best and the obligation for all Public Administrations to avoid discrimination of citizens based on their technological choices.

  • Notes from ODF Plugfest in Granada, Day One

    The ODF Plugfest is a Conference whose goal is to to achieve the maximum interoperability between competing applications, platforms and technologies in the area of digital document sharing, and to promote the OpenDocument format (ODF). This page, as the others that will follow on this website, is a short technical summary, primarily aimed at developers, of what happened during the first day of the conference. Later next week I’ll also post a non-technical summary of the whole event at the Stop.