Clay Leeds wrote:
On Mar 23, 2006, at 5:03 PM, Web Maestro Clay wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone has come up with a solution to an
OpenOffice.org problem where it inconsistently styles lists. Here's a
relevant snippet of the OpenOffice.org Writer's 'content.xml' file:
<snip>
NOTE: The above change was made to both of the following files:
forrest/trunk/plugins/
org.apache.forrest.plugin.input.OpenOffice.org/resources/
stylesheets/openoffice-writer-to-forrest.xsl
forrest/trunk/build/plugins/
org.apache.forrest.plugin.input.OpenOffice.org/resources/
stylesheets/openoffice-writer-to-forrest.xsl
Any ideas?
The OpenOffice styling system is tough to get a handle on. I may choose
the style 'Heading 2', but it seems to be that if the style didn't come
directly from the Forrest sample file in the Forrest plug- in directory
(even if those styles have been 'loaded' into the current document via
Styles Load [x] Overwrite), Forrest doesn't generate the style as
expected.
Yes, this is by design. It is impossible to predict what someone has
defined "heading 2" in Open Office to be. I've seen users who use it for
really random things, not just section headings. Hence we force a user
to use a defined style.
Remember one of our goals is to provide a consistent look and feel
across all documents. With an editor like OOo there is too many
variations of style to achieve the same look in the editor to be able to
be consistent in the final rendering. The solution to date has to
severely restrict what the user is allowed to use.
I did implement a partial solution in the past that allowed some style
information to be passed through as embedded CSS. I'd like to see more
work on this kind of support for other elements (like heading 2). The
problem is that there is no guarantee that a user will use heading to as
a section heading.
I was able to workaround the list problem to some degree (95%
effective) by selecting above and below the list area and applying the
'Default' paragraph style.
Unfortunately, I am having additional problems applying 'Heading x'
styles. They get translated into <p class="Heading 2"> elements instead
of <h2>:
<p class="Heading 2">Transaction Types Supported</p>
That sounds like a side effect of the partial styling info I refer to above.
I think the problem is that I'm starting from blank documents and
importing the Forrest-related styles, rather than starting from the
Forrest documents. I'm going to see about modifying OpenOffice.org
startup system, so new documents are based on Forrest's 'openoffice-
writer.sxw'.
That sounds like a good solution. If you figure out how to do this then
a patch for the docs would be welcome.
Building upon this idea, I've always hoped that one day I will find the
time to create a custom config for OOo that will only provide the
elements we allow.
Ross
