Pretty Documents: Using OpenOffice::OODoc in a production environment
Richard A. Still
Online Talent Manager / Octogram.net
Setting up the Environment
- Create Macro in Open Office
- Make sure that Xvfb is installed on the server
- Install OpenOffice::OODoc from CPAN
- Here is a wrapper for the Open Office command line: OpenOffice.pm
Elements of Report Program
- Use OODoc to unpack the template
- Make modifications to document
- Clean up any formatting issues
- Save the result
- Send to OpenOffice for conversion
Helpful Tips
- Define as much as possible through Open Office program
- Change the template to use only styles
- Wait times when processing
- Big changes are easy, little changes are hard
Tables
- Table formatting is tricky, create empty tables in the template and copy them in the code.
- OpenOffice::OODoc cannot 'see' merged cells or access them via row/column addressing. Use 'selectElementsByContent'
- Give each table a name so that it can be addressed from the code
- Visual layout is easier via the Open Office interface, sizing and formatting are painful from code, use styles!
Images
- OpenOffice::OODoc has no facility for guessing the sizes of images. You need to specify the size of the image (in centimeters)
- PNG, GIF, or JPG images are no problem, but if you want good quality printouts, set the DPI high or oversize the image and force it smaller in the size parameter
- For whatever reason, correctly putting a style on an image seems to be impossible. Use Tables to move images around the screen
Examples
The best way to learn this is through examples, so let's walk through a few!
This presentation is available here: http://www.oakbox.com/OOODoc/
And code examples are here: examples.tar.gz
Thank you