[Sussex] Life without Microsoft - day 1

nik at wired4life.org nik at wired4life.org
Mon Nov 10 23:00:36 UTC 2003


Some guide to office automation with OOo

1. using Unzip, extract content.xml from document.sxw

2. using anything that can read/write ascii to a file
edit/amend/update/correct the file

3. replace content.xml into file

4. here the borked bit for now: at commandline do something with oo file

5. err thats it.

Unzip a Open Office document and its plain ascii XML and my god the
potential for that. 

Open Office macros do work quite well, and have proved as functional in
delivery as MS components.

however i dont actually want my office suite to integrate with my
external datasources, addressbooks and the rest.

i mean its useful , sure, but that road leads to security and virus
issues. 

Desktop integration wise the bar looks like this.

		windows
usablity<--------------------------------------------->security
					linux


the fact that i can write a app to drop,explode, manage a Office
document using a browser is cool, since the browser app can integrate
with some db app. but I really want OfficeDocument>pdf export at the
command line then im happy.


-- 
nik at wired4life.org	http://www.wired4life.org/	Wired4Life, an Answer.


MATH AND ALCOHOL DON'T MIX! Please, don't drink and derive. Mathematicians Against Drunk Deriving 





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