Table of Contents
OpenOffice.org Essentials introduces you to the XML that serves as the native internal format of OpenOffice.org, an open source, cross-platform office suite.
You should read this book if you want to extract data from an OpenOffice.org document, convert your data to an OpenOffice.org document, or simply find out how OpenOffice.org stores its data “under the hood.”
If you need to know absolutely everything about the OpenOffice.org internal format, you should download the OpenOffice.org XML File Format Working Draft - Technical Reference Manual from http://xml.openoffice.org/general.html. That document was a major source of reference for this book.
If you simply want to use OpenOffice.org to create documents, you need only download the software from http://www.openoffice.org/ and start using it. There's no need for you to know what's going on behind the scenes unless you wish to satisfy your lively intellectual curiosity.
The examples in this book are written using a variety of tools and languages. I prefer to use open-source tools which work cross-platform, so most of the programming examples will be in Perl or Java. I use the Xalan XSLT processor, which you may find at http://xml.apache.org. All the examples in this book have been tested with OpenOffice.org version 1.1, Perl 5.8.0, and Xalan-J 2.5.1 on a Linux system using the SuSE 8.2 distribution.
- Chapter 1, The OpenOffice.org File Format
This chapter tells you how an OpenOffice.org file is stored, and what its major components are.
- Chapter 2, The meta.xml, styles.xml, settings.xml, and content.xml Files
This chapter explains the XML elements that describe meta-information (information about the document), style information, and various settings associated with an OpenOffice.org document. It also describes the general structure of the file that contains a document’s content.
- Chapter 3, Text Document Basics
This chapter tells you how OpenOffice.org text documents handle character, paragraph, and section formatting. It also describes bulleted and numbered lists, and outline numbering.
- Chapter 4, Text Documents—Advanced
This chapter covers frames, images, fields, footnotes, tracking changes, and tables in text documents.
- Chapter 5, Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets have a great deal in common with tables; this chapter points out the similarities and differences. It also covers topics such as formulas and content validation.
- Chapter 6, Drawings
This chapter explains the OpenOffice.org elements for basic shapes such as lines, rectangles, circles, etc.; stroke and fill properties; 3-D elements and text animation.
- Chapter 7, Presentation
Text and drawings are at the heart of a presentation; this chapter covers the elements used to add backgrounds, transitions, and sound.
- Chapter 8, Charts
OpenOffice.org also allows you to draw charts using the data in your spreadsheets. This chapter describes how OpenOffice.org implements chart titles, legends, axes and tickmarks.
- Chapter 9, Filters
You don’t have to create a stand-alone application to transform XML files to OpenOffice.org documents. In this chapter, you’ll find out how to make an import filter that integrates your transformations into the Openoffice.org application.
- Appendix A, The XML You Need for OpenOffice.org
XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is the “native language” of OpenOffice.org. If you haven't used XML before, you should read this appendix to familiarize yourself with this remarkably powerful and flexible format for structuring data and documents.
- Appendix B, The XSLT You Need for OpenOffice.org
XSLT is an XML markup language that describes how to transform an input XML document to an output document, which may be either plain text or XML. XSLT makes it easy to have a single document serve many purposes. This appendix is a brief introduction to this powerful language.
- Appendix C, Utilities for OpenOffice.org Documents
This appendix contains utility programs that we created while writing this book. They made it easier for us to manipulate OpenOffice.org documents, and we hope they do the same for you.
Constant Width is used for code examples and fragments.
Constant width bold is used to highlight a section of code being discussed in the text.
Constant width italic is used for replaceable elements in code examples.
Names of XML elements will be set in constant width enclosed in angle brackets, as in the <office:document> element. Attribute names and values will be in constant width, as in the fo:font-size attribute with a value of 0.5cm.
This book uses callouts to denote “points of interest” in code listings. A callout is shown as a white number in a black circle; the corresponding number after the listing gives an explanation. Here's an example:
Roses are red, Violets are blue.Some poems rhyme; This one doesn't.
| | Violets are actually violet. Saying that they are blue is an example of poetic license. |
| | This poem uses the literary device known as a surprise ending. |
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Thanks to Simon St. Laurent, the editor of this book, who thought it would be a good idea and encouraged me to write it.
Thanks to Edd Dumbill, who wrote the document which I modified slightly to create Appendix A. Of course, any errors in that appendix have been added by my modifications. Michael Chase provided a platform-independent version of the pack and unpack programs described in the section called “Unpacking and Packing OpenOffice.org files”.
Since this is a work in progress, I also want to thank all the people who are taking the time to read and review it and send their comments.
