Dev - openoffice integration for ofbiz?

[Si Chen-2]

Al,

Are you doing some kind of openoffice integration for ofbiz?

Si
 
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[byersa]

Si Chen wrote:

> Al,
>
> Are you doing some kind of openoffice integration for ofbiz?
>
> Si
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
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>

Si,

Yes, it is for the project on which David and I are working for
Integral. We are trying to get basic document conversion (try primary
goal is to be able to display Word docs) and document comparison. I hope
to tie these into the content management system, along with the new
ContentRevision capability, so that more content types can be rendered
and the difference between versions of a Word document can be shown. We
will also be bring Surveys under the CMS umbrella (ie. giving them a
dataResourceTypeId).

OpenOffice2 is based on the OpenDocument format and I see a lot of press
about it. Supporting it would seem like a good direction for OFBiz to
go, though nothing that I am doing right now is OpenDoc specific. Not
sure how all that fits into the CMS, but I will be looking at it. Always
open to ideas.

-Al
 
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[Si Chen-2]

That is great!

So how would it work?  Would we be able to create and edit content items
in the content manager and have them stored in OpenOffice document format?

I also saw something about PDF surveys.  Is that a way to render a
survey as a PDF or to read a specially-formatted PDF and convert it to a
Survey in OFBIZ?

Si

Al Byers wrote:

> Si Chen wrote:
>
>> Al,
>>
>> Are you doing some kind of openoffice integration for ofbiz?
>>
>> Si
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>
> Si,
>
> Yes, it is for the project on which David and I are working for
> Integral. We are trying to get basic document conversion (try primary
> goal is to be able to display Word docs) and document comparison. I
> hope to tie these into the content management system, along with the
> new ContentRevision capability, so that more content types can be
> rendered and the difference between versions of a Word document can be
> shown. We will also be bring Surveys under the CMS umbrella (ie.
> giving them a dataResourceTypeId).
>
> OpenOffice2 is based on the OpenDocument format and I see a lot of
> press about it. Supporting it would seem like a good direction for
> OFBiz to go, though nothing that I am doing right now is OpenDoc
> specific. Not sure how all that fits into the CMS, but I will be
> looking at it. Always open to ideas.
>
> -Al
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[byersa]

Si Chen wrote:

> That is great!
>
> So how would it work?  

Can't say. That would require abstract thinking.

> Would we be able to create and edit content items in the content
> manager and have them stored in OpenOffice document format?

I was waiting for some one to suggest something like this :0) I would
like to hear ideas of how this capability could be used. You should
certainly be able to upload documents in HTML, OpenDoc, Microsoft Word
or, theoretically, any format for which OpenOffice provides a filter and
download any document stored in the content manager to any OO-supported
format. I guess we will give users the option to convert uploaded
documents or store them in their native format. We will be able to
export anything into PDF, but you can't read a PDF into OO. I have set
up a framework that will eventually be able to take a screen-widget def
and render it as a PDF, instead of HTML, though I haven't seen too much
need for that.

One of the things that I see a need for, is the need to read in CSS
stylesheets and allow the user to change values via a popup screen and
re-render screens. As OFBiz moves more into CSS styling and AJAX, that
will become more important. There is a W3C project for this, SAC, and
some libraries to do the conversions.

>
> I also saw something about PDF surveys.  Is that a way to render a
> survey as a PDF or to read a specially-formatted PDF and convert it to
> a Survey in OFBIZ?

Yeah, they are called AcroForms or FDF. I am adding services that will
create a Survey/SurveyQuestions from one of these PDFs. It does not do a
good job of building the questions; that would have to be done manually
or through a much smarter import routine. I am using the iText PDF libs
and building on work that Integral has already done.

It could also populate a SurveyResponse from a pdf for which the user
has entered data. So, these PDFs could be sent out as emails and the
users respond and send them back and the response imported into a
SurveyResponse. The trouble is that the free Acrobat reader won't save
user entered data; it would seem that the user would have to have
Acrobat Standard or Professional. There is also a service to populate an
AcroForm from a SurveyResponse, so it would be a way to do mail-merge
with PDFs.

-Al

>
> Si
>

 
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[Si Chen-2]

Al,

Sorry, I was not trying to ask a trick question or suggest a lot of new
features for you to do.  I was merely curious what we could do right now
with the open office integration.  Are there already some features or
screens we could use?

The PDF to survey is really interesting.  So is the idea to scan in
survey responses and parse and store them into OFBIZ?  Do the surveys
have to follow a particular standard format, or can one define those?

Si

Al Byers wrote:

> Si Chen wrote:
>
>> That is great!
>>
>> So how would it work?  
>
>
> Can't say. That would require abstract thinking.
>
>> Would we be able to create and edit content items in the content
>> manager and have them stored in OpenOffice document format?
>
>
> I was waiting for some one to suggest something like this :0) I would
> like to hear ideas of how this capability could be used. You should
> certainly be able to upload documents in HTML, OpenDoc, Microsoft Word
> or, theoretically, any format for which OpenOffice provides a filter
> and download any document stored in the content manager to any
> OO-supported format. I guess we will give users the option to convert
> uploaded documents or store them in their native format. We will be
> able to export anything into PDF, but you can't read a PDF into OO. I
> have set up a framework that will eventually be able to take a
> screen-widget def and render it as a PDF, instead of HTML, though I
> haven't seen too much need for that.
>
> One of the things that I see a need for, is the need to read in CSS
> stylesheets and allow the user to change values via a popup screen and
> re-render screens. As OFBiz moves more into CSS styling and AJAX, that
> will become more important. There is a W3C project for this, SAC, and
> some libraries to do the conversions.
>
>>
>> I also saw something about PDF surveys.  Is that a way to render a
>> survey as a PDF or to read a specially-formatted PDF and convert it
>> to a Survey in OFBIZ?
>
>
> Yeah, they are called AcroForms or FDF. I am adding services that will
> create a Survey/SurveyQuestions from one of these PDFs. It does not do
> a good job of building the questions; that would have to be done
> manually or through a much smarter import routine. I am using the
> iText PDF libs and building on work that Integral has already done.
>
> It could also populate a SurveyResponse from a pdf for which the user
> has entered data. So, these PDFs could be sent out as emails and the
> users respond and send them back and the response imported into a
> SurveyResponse. The trouble is that the free Acrobat reader won't save
> user entered data; it would seem that the user would have to have
> Acrobat Standard or Professional. There is also a service to populate
> an AcroForm from a SurveyResponse, so it would be a way to do
> mail-merge with PDFs.
>
> -Al
>
>>
>> Si
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[byersa]

Si Chen wrote:

> Al,
>
> Sorry, I was not trying to ask a trick question or suggest a lot of
> new features for you to do.  I was merely curious what we could do
> right now with the open office integration.  Are there already some
> features or screens we could use?

Not much right now. I would like to upgrade the content manager and
include something along these lines, but I haven't quite envisioned it, yet.

>
> The PDF to survey is really interesting.  So is the idea to scan in
> survey responses and parse and store them into OFBIZ?

That is the idea. They will also be part of the content manager,
primarily, I think, so that revisions to the survey can be tracked.

> Do the surveys have to follow a particular standard format, or can one
> define those?

Right now, we can only handle text fields. We should be able to handle
radio button fields, but that is a new feature of iText and I have not
had any luck making it work. Right now, there is no special naming
convention for the fields, the name of the FDF field must match the
SurveyQuestion.description field value. Not sure if it will stay this
way or not.

-Al

>
> Si


 
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[Si Chen-2]

Hey Al,

Hope you don't think I'm pestering you.  I just think this OO
integration is so cool.

Do you have any planned functionality?

Otherwise, of course, it would be nice if some kind of content can be
automatically rendered into an OO document.

Si

Al Byers wrote:

> Si Chen wrote:
>
>> Al,
>>
>> Sorry, I was not trying to ask a trick question or suggest a lot of
>> new features for you to do.  I was merely curious what we could do
>> right now with the open office integration.  Are there already some
>> features or screens we could use?
>
>
> Not much right now. I would like to upgrade the content manager and
> include something along these lines, but I haven't quite envisioned
> it, yet.
>
>>
>> The PDF to survey is really interesting.  So is the idea to scan in
>> survey responses and parse and store them into OFBIZ?
>
>
> That is the idea. They will also be part of the content manager,
> primarily, I think, so that revisions to the survey can be tracked.
>
>> Do the surveys have to follow a particular standard format, or can
>> one define those?
>
>
> Right now, we can only handle text fields. We should be able to handle
> radio button fields, but that is a new feature of iText and I have not
> had any luck making it work. Right now, there is no special naming
> convention for the fields, the name of the FDF field must match the
> SurveyQuestion.description field value. Not sure if it will stay this
> way or not.
>
> -Al
>
>>
>> Si
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

 
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[David E. Jones]

To expound on the PDF/FDF/AcroForm and Survey stuff the general idea  
is to be able to generate a Survey based on an AcroForm definition  
and then take SurveyResponses based on that Survey and use them to  
fill out the form and generate a PDF that represents the filled out  
AcroForm (often a combination of a base PDF that could be scanned, an  
FDF with field definitions, and then the SurveyResponse to generate a  
filled out PDF with the answers overlaid on the base PDF).

This effectively creates and AcroForm integration with OFBiz Surveys  
providing management of questions and answers with a UI for taking  
surveys, reports & statistics, etc.

-David


On Dec 16, 2005, at 3:27 PM, Al Byers wrote:

> Si Chen wrote:
>
>> Al,
>>
>> Sorry, I was not trying to ask a trick question or suggest a lot  
>> of new features for you to do.  I was merely curious what we could  
>> do right now with the open office integration.  Are there already  
>> some features or screens we could use?
>
> Not much right now. I would like to upgrade the content manager and  
> include something along these lines, but I haven't quite envisioned  
> it, yet.
>
>>
>> The PDF to survey is really interesting.  So is the idea to scan  
>> in survey responses and parse and store them into OFBIZ?
>
> That is the idea. They will also be part of the content manager,  
> primarily, I think, so that revisions to the survey can be tracked.
>
>> Do the surveys have to follow a particular standard format, or can  
>> one define those?
>
> Right now, we can only handle text fields. We should be able to  
> handle radio button fields, but that is a new feature of iText and  
> I have not had any luck making it work. Right now, there is no  
> special naming convention for the fields, the name of the FDF field  
> must match the SurveyQuestion.description field value. Not sure if  
> it will stay this way or not.
>
> -Al
>
>>
>> Si
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/dev

 
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