On 15 Jun 2006 at 9:02, G. Roderick Singleton wrote: > On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 09:05 +0100, mike scott wrote: > > My wife has a need to produce certificate documents for some of her > > pupils. She was making these from a small number of OOo writer > > templates, editing by hand to insert correct names and dates. However, ... > > Is there any easy way of building an OOo document directly under > > program control? Something allowing /easy/ programmatic control instead > > of gui control of the document components? ... > Have you tried using a Calc spreadsheet as a addressbook? Seems to me > that this along with File > New > Labels and picking one of the > certificate templates would do the trick. See > http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/word_processing/writer2_EN.html > and give it a shot.
Hmmm. Nice idea, but doesn't look so simple as that. Firstly, my perl code even edits styles as necessary to make sure text will fit in the allotted space (some of these kids have long monikers!!), and I assume that's not possible with the spreadsheet approach. (I do take some /really/ horrible liberties with the xml!) Secondly, things seem to have changed with OOo v2. I know I /used/ to have my spreadsheet addressbook hooked in as a database under 1.x; that doesn't seem possible now [in fact, my wife still uses the older version, but I'd not want a solution reliant on this, obviously]. The url you provided is somewhat out-of-date I'm afraid :-( If I 'force' use of a spreadsheet instead of a "real" database, then I eventually get messages like "connection to external datasource not established... no SDBC driver...". The help files seem only to refer to Base. Has this indeed changed fundamentally, or have I missed something? Irrespective of my immediate problem, I'd like to understand what's happening. -- various incoming sites blocked because of spam; see http://www.scottsonline.org.uk for a list and openpgp crypto key (key fingerprint 2ACC 9F21 5103 F68C 7C32 9EA8 C949 81E1 31C9 1364) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mike Scott, Harlow, Essex, England --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
