Intro to LibreOffice Presentations

Aaron_C_Johnson · March 13, 2013, 6:25am

Hello everyone-

Awhile back I created a couple of LibreOffice presentations that I used to help teach the basics of LibreOffice to our elementary school teachers. There are two presentations; the first one covers Writer and Calc, and the second one covers Impress.

You can download them from here:

Introduction to LibreOffice - Writer and Calc: ODP <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/LO-Presentation.zip> PPT <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-11-28-2012.ppt> PDF <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-11-28-2012.pdf>
Introduction to LibreOffice - Impress - By Aaron Johnson: ODP <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/LibreOffice_Impress_Presentation_Created_by_Aaron_Johnson.odp> PPT <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/LibreOffice_Impress_Presentation_Created_by_Aaron_Johnson.ppt> PDF <http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/LibreOffice_Impress_Presentation_Created_by_Aaron_Johnson.pdf>

Anyone is welcome to take these and modify them as you like, I just ask that if you change them that you take out my name (Aaron Johnson) and also remove "Jordan Catholic School" from the presentations as well... Credit for my work does not need to be given, you can claim it as your own if you desire

Tom_Davies · March 13, 2013, 10:16am

Hi
You might like to use a copyright (well, specifically copyleft really) license from Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/
All LibreOffice's official documentation uses the CC-by-SA agreement which just lists contributors even if they were originally writing for other projects. There are other licenses Creative Commons licenses to cover quite a good range of ways of sharing.
Good work chap!
Regards from
Tom

Pedro_Lino · March 13, 2013, 11:49am

Hi Aaron

Aaron C Johnson wrote

Awhile back I created a couple of LibreOffice presentations that I used
to help teach the basics of LibreOffice to our elementary school
teachers.

Fantastic! This is the true spirit of a User to User mailing list and of
Open Source software.
Thank you for sharing!

Aaron C Johnson wrote

Introduction to LibreOffice - Writer and Calc:
ODP
http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/LO-Presentation.zip
PPT
http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-11-28-2012.ppt
PDF
http://www.jordanschool.com/wp-content/uploads/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-11-28-2012.pdf

I think you have just revealed a bug in Impress: if you look at the PDF, you
will notice that in pages 8,9 and 23,24,25 there is an OLE icon in the
middle of the page.
This refers to the PDF files which should be embedded (or linked) but are
not.
In fact in my system (Windows XP SP3) clicking on those slides immediately
crashes LO (this is not a complain! I'm just trying to get this fixed in LO
)
The odd thing is that the links point to e.g.
xlink:href="../Jordan%20-%20LibreOffice%20-%20Standard%20Toolbar.pdf"
which should refer to a one level up folder

So, I'm curious: do the slides in those pages look the same in the ppt file
in your computer? Are the PDFs with the toolbar button descriptions in the
same folder? Can you test with the ODP and PDF files in another PC (i.e. not
the one you usually use to present this)?

Aaron C Johnson wrote

Anyone is welcome to take these and modify them as you like, I just ask
that if you change them that you take out my name (Aaron Johnson) and
also remove "Jordan Catholic School" from the presentations as well...
Credit for my work does not need to be given, you can claim it as your
own if you desire

I'm not sure about this but I think the CC license included in the last
slide requires people to ask your permission if they choose not to give you
any credit
Actually I would suggest that you included the same CC license on the last
slide of the Introduction to Impress

This will not make people good but at least it will morally press them to be
fair

Aaron_C_Johnson · March 13, 2013, 1:51pm

Pedro-

Hi Aaron

Fantastic! This is the true spirit of a User to User mailing list and of
Open Source software.
Thank you for sharing!

I think you have just revealed a bug in Impress: if you look at the PDF, you
will notice that in pages 8,9 and 23,24,25 there is an OLE icon in the
middle of the page.
This refers to the PDF files which should be embedded (or linked) but are
not.
In fact in my system (Windows XP SP3) clicking on those slides immediately
crashes LO (this is not a complain! I'm just trying to get this fixed in LO
)
The odd thing is that the links point to e.g.
xlink:href="../Jordan%20-%20LibreOffice%20-%20Standard%20Toolbar.pdf"
which should refer to a one level up folder

So you're saying that you downloaded the zip file and extracted it and opened the odp file and it crashed LibreOffice? I think I created the presentation in LibreOffice 3.5 (although I'm not positive) and last time I tried to extract the files and open the odp file it worked fine...

So, I'm curious: do the slides in those pages look the same in the ppt file
in your computer? Are the PDFs with the toolbar button descriptions in the
same folder? Can you test with the ODP and PDF files in another PC (i.e. not
the one you usually use to present this)?

I always assumed that this was a native feature to odp and would not work properly in ppt format. When I open the ppt version it does not work properly, and yes the pdf just shows the OLE icon because a pdf isn't dynamic enough to handle something like that.

You're right, I justed tried to open it in LibreOffice 4 and it doesn't crash but the embedded pdf's do not load either... I'll have to try it on another computer with an older version of LibreOffice but I assure you it worked before and I was even able to extract the zip and open it on multiple computers running similar versions of LibreOffice so it must be some sort of regression bug...

I'm not sure about this but I think the CC license included in the last
slide requires people to ask your permission if they choose not to give you
any credit
Actually I would suggest that you included the same CC license on the last
slide of the Introduction to Impress

This will not make people good but at least it will morally press them to be
fair

Honestly, I didn't even pay attention that the CC license was even there :). That was obviously put there by the LibreOffice guy who made the template and posted it to the LibreOffice Templates website...

So I guess if that means it needs to be attributed then that is fine, I just didn't want someone to alter it significantly and leave the parts in that says 'Jordan Catholic School' and 'Presented By Aaron Johnson' but really it's not even that big of a deal...

Pedro_Lino · March 13, 2013, 2:14pm

Hi again Aaron

Aaron C Johnson wrote

So you're saying that you downloaded the zip file and extracted it and
opened the odp file and it crashed LibreOffice? I think I created the
presentation in LibreOffice 3.5 (although I'm not positive) and last
time I tried to extract the files and open the odp file it worked fine...

I have tested it under LO 3.3.4.1, 3.4.5.2, 3.5.5.3, 3.6.5.2 and 4.0.1.2
All crashed when I click on the miniature (on the Slide Pane) of any of the
slides mentioned in the previous message.

Aaron C Johnson wrote

I always assumed that this was a native feature to odp and would not
work properly in ppt format. When I open the ppt version it does not
work properly, and yes the pdf just shows the OLE icon because a pdf
isn't dynamic enough to handle something like that.

Agreed for the PDF. But then what is the point of also distributing a PPT
file which you know is incomplete/not functional?

Aaron C Johnson wrote

You're right, I justed tried to open it in LibreOffice 4 and it doesn't
crash but the embedded pdf's do not load either... I'll have to try it
on another computer with an older version of LibreOffice but I assure
you it worked before and I was even able to extract the zip and open it
on multiple computers running similar versions of LibreOffice so it must
be some sort of regression bug...

It doesn't seem to be a regression because it happens in all versions I
tested.
Did the computers you refer to run Windows or another OS?

Tinkerer · March 13, 2013, 7:18pm

Aaron

On a Mac 10.8.2 using Libre 4.0.1 everything works OK
I would fault the PPT's.
The Black fonts on a Dark background were impossible to read and not all
projectors would cope adequately.
I went through the slides altering the font colour where I had difficulty
reading.
The finished result looks great.

Tink.

Aaron_C_Johnson · March 13, 2013, 7:35pm

Pedro-

Hi again Aaron

I have tested it under LO 3.3.4.1, 3.4.5.2, 3.5.5.3, 3.6.5.2 and 4.0.1.2
All crashed when I click on the miniature (on the Slide Pane) of any of the
slides mentioned in the previous message.

Okay, I just tested this on Windows XP SP3 (new installation) with LibreOffice 4.0.1.2 and it did not crash, neither when I extracted the zip, nor when I opened the odp directly from the archive without extracting (which is not the right way to open it obviously but I wanted to cover all bases...)

However, the embedded pdf pages did not load the pdf files like they are supposed to... Also, I tried moving the pdf files up one level but it did make any difference...

Agreed for the PDF. But then what is the point of also distributing a PPT
file which you know is incomplete/not functional?

The only reason why I created the ppt was for Microsoft Office users, and to demonstrate that a presentation in LibreOffice Impress can be saved in ppt format and work (almost) perfectly.

It doesn't seem to be a regression because it happens in all versions I
tested.
Did the computers you refer to run Windows or another OS?

When I created the Writer and Calc LibreOffice presentation I actually started to create it in LibreOffice 3.5 (or 3.6) in Ubuntu 12.04 and then I finished the presentation on LibreOffice 3.5 (or 3.6) on a Windows XP SP3 machine at our school.

I am not having very good luck getting the embedded pdfs to load at all on any versions of LibreOffice, but I still am not having any crashes either... I would suggest that you try to rename "Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\LibreOffice" and try it again since this will restore all settings back to default.

I need to try to load the odp version of the presentation on the computer that I made the presentation on and report back to you.

Sorry for all of the headache. It's been awhile since I created it and I really just wanted to post it somewhere for people at least as a "starting point" if nothing else.

Aaron Johnson

Aaron_C_Johnson · March 13, 2013, 7:38pm

Thank you for the awesome feedback

Pedro_Lino · March 15, 2013, 12:56am

Hi Aaron

Aaron C Johnson wrote

I need to try to load the odp version of the presentation on the
computer that I made the presentation on and report back to you.

Sorry for all of the headache. It's been awhile since I created it and I
really just wanted to post it somewhere for people at least as a
"starting point" if nothing else.

I managed to edit your presentation in OOo 3.4.1
I removed the non-working OLE frames, inserted the PDFs again as OLE objects
and now it can be opened under LibreOffice

Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-03-15-2013.odp
<http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/file/n4043927/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-03-15-2013.odp>

I sincerely apologize if my comments sounded ungrateful. They are indeed a
good starting point. I was just warning you of the problem and trying to
help find a solution.

Kind regards,
Pedro

Aaron_C_Johnson · March 15, 2013, 2:33am

Pedro-

Hi Aaron

I managed to edit your presentation in OOo 3.4.1
I removed the non-working OLE frames, inserted the PDFs again as OLE objects
and now it can be opened under LibreOffice

Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-03-15-2013.odp
<http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/file/n4043927/Jordan-LibreOffice-Presentation-03-15-2013.odp>

I sincerely apologize if my comments sounded ungrateful. They are indeed a
good starting point. I was just warning you of the problem and trying to
help find a solution.

Kind regards,
Pedro

Excellent! Thank you for taking the time to fix it and repost. I did not get the feeling that you were ungrateful and I can understand that it is frustrating when technology does not always work as intended

I see how you re-embeded the pdf files but what's interesting is that this is different than how it worked originally... I believe that it actually displayed a scroll bar and allowed you to scroll through the embedded pdf document... Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I remember.

I will retest this as soon as I can and reply back to you. I know it's not that big of a deal but now I want to know what the heck is going on!!!