[Sussex] Life without Microsoft - day 1

[Mark Harrison]

Nik,

Thanks for this. I was vaguely aware that OOo's XML support was WAY better
than MS's, but hadn't realised how straightforward it really was.

The question for me isn't whether OOo is easy/straightforward to program -
I'm sure it is. The question for me, bearing in mind that my clients are
large corporates, is how to overcome the large legacy VBA codebase.

It reminds me of a knowledgebase entry I wrote back in about 1994:

Product: Lotus 1-2-3, 2.4
Question: How do I insert multiple fonts into a single cell
Answer: Customer is an accountant. Advise him to use WordPerfect for writing
letters and not 1-2-3.

M.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nik at wired4life.org>
To: "LUG email list for the Sussex Counties" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Sussex] Life without Microsoft - day 1


> 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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