PowerPoint templates and choice of .pot vs .potx?

[Advrk_Aplmrkt]

Hello,

My group is in the process of setting up a slideshow template, and
unfortunately for practical reasons need to save it as a PowerPoint
template.

My question is twofold:

(1) What are some of your experiences in opening and using PowerPoint
templates in LibreOffice? I prefer saving in the template in a format that I
can reasonably expect good support for in LibreOffice.

(2) We prefer a format that is as future proof as possible (in terms of
consistent look and format using it between different software, Micro$oft or
otherwise). With that in mind, which of the following would be a better
choice? Microsoft PowerPoint 97/Xp/2000/2003 Template (*.pot), Microsoft
PowerPoint 2007/2010 XML Template (*.potx), or Office Open XML Presentation
Template (*.potm; *.potx)?

Our work environment consists mainly of computers running Micro$oft
PowerPoint 2010, a couple with PowerPoint 2007, and only one with
LibreOffice 3.5. (Unfortunately switching all to LibreOffice is not
practical for numerous reasons that I wish weren't true, but beyond the
scope of this email.)

Thank you in advance for your time.

[sbicknel]

Hello,

My group is in the process of setting up a slideshow template, and
unfortunately for practical reasons need to save it as a PowerPoint
template.

My question is twofold:

(1) What are some of your experiences in opening and using PowerPoint
templates in LibreOffice? I prefer saving in the template in a format that I
can reasonably expect good support for in LibreOffice.

Templates created in PowerPoint, regardless of the file format, often have
issues in LibreOffice. The most common issues I have encountered are elements
that are misplaced on the slide and font effects that do not transfer to
LibreOffice from PowerPoint. But the most faithful reproduction seems to occur
when using ppt files, regardless of whether they were created from a pot or a
potx. pptx files are not as well-supported under LibreOffice as .ppt files are.
But that's just my experience using a couple of templates I created in
PowerPoint 2010.

(2) We prefer a format that is as future proof as possible (in terms of
consistent look and format using it between different software, Micro$oft or
otherwise). With that in mind, which of the following would be a better
choice? Microsoft PowerPoint 97/Xp/2000/2003 Template (*.pot), Microsoft
PowerPoint 2007/2010 XML Template (*.potx), or Office Open XML Presentation
Template (*.potm; *.potx)?

That's a difficult question to give a blanket answer for. It will depend on what
features you include in your template. You will need to ensure that the fonts
you use are available on all systems where the templates will be used, for
instance. Your templates will need to be tested on all the software where it
will be used to ensure that formatting is consistent. This could be an ongoing
process.

One thing you might consider is whether you need the presentation in any of
those formats. PowerPoint and Libreoffice can export presentations to PDF, which
can be presented with some limited transition effects in many PDF viewers. Not
many viewers offer a presentation mode with suitable features, though. Okular
seems to have the best presentation mode among the PDF viewers I have tested,
and there is a Windows version of that available from kde.org.

Our work environment consists mainly of computers running Micro$oft
PowerPoint 2010, a couple with PowerPoint 2007, and only one with
LibreOffice 3.5. (Unfortunately switching all to LibreOffice is not
practical for numerous reasons that I wish weren't true, but beyond the
scope of this email.)

You will have far fewer headaches by obtaining an Office license for the one
machine that doesn't have it than to try to make all presentation programs
happy with whatever format is the least common denominator, unfortunately.

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Educational institutions and students can sometimes get discounts as do some charitable organisations.

I think my route would be to try to set-up the template in LibreOffice but use the .otp (native ODF template format) for the main original, then use that to Save As a .pot rather than a .potX to create one that MS Office can open and then use MS Office to tweak the .pot to fix any problems.  Scott has more experience with doing presentations tho but that is what i would do for spreadsheets or word-processor files.

Regards from
Tom

[planas]

On 06/13/2012 08:32 PM, Tom Davies wrote:

Hi
Educational institutions and students can sometimes get discounts as do some charitable organisations.

I think my route would be to try to set-up the template in LibreOffice but use the .otp (native ODF template format) for the main original, then use that to Save As a .pot rather than a .potX to create one that MS Office can open and then use MS Office to tweak the .pot to fix any problems. Scott has more experience with doing presentations tho but that is what i would do for spreadsheets or word-processor files.

Regards from
Tom

--- On Wed, 13/6/12, Scott <sbicknel@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Scott <sbicknel@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] PowerPoint templates and choice of .pot vs .potx?
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Wednesday, 13 June, 2012, 23:14

On Wednesday June 13, 2012 1:27 pm avamk wrote:

Hello,

My group is in the process of setting up a slideshow template, and
unfortunately for practical reasons need to save it as a PowerPoint
template.

My question is twofold:

(1) What are some of your experiences in opening and using PowerPoint
templates in LibreOffice? I prefer saving in the template in a format that I
can reasonably expect good support for in LibreOffice.

Templates created in PowerPoint, regardless of the file format, often have
issues in LibreOffice. The most common issues I have encountered are elements
that are misplaced on the slide and font effects that do not transfer to
LibreOffice from PowerPoint. But the most faithful reproduction seems to occur
when using ppt files, regardless of whether they were created from a pot or a
potx. pptx files are not as well-supported under LibreOffice as .ppt files are.
But that's just my experience using a couple of templates I created in
PowerPoint 2010.

(2) We prefer a format that is as future proof as possible (in terms of
consistent look and format using it between different software, Micro$oft or
otherwise). With that in mind, which of the following would be a better
choice? Microsoft PowerPoint 97/Xp/2000/2003 Template (*.pot), Microsoft
PowerPoint 2007/2010 XML Template (*.potx), or Office Open XML Presentation
Template (*.potm; *.potx)?

That's a difficult question to give a blanket answer for. It will depend on what
features you include in your template. You will need to ensure that the fonts
you use are available on all systems where the templates will be used, for
instance. Your templates will need to be tested on all the software where it
will be used to ensure that formatting is consistent. This could be an ongoing
process.

One thing you might consider is whether you need the presentation in any of
those formats. PowerPoint and Libreoffice can export presentations to PDF, which
can be presented with some limited transition effects in many PDF viewers. Not
many viewers offer a presentation mode with suitable features, though. Okular
seems to have the best presentation mode among the PDF viewers I have tested,
and there is a Windows version of that available from kde.org.

Our work environment consists mainly of computers running Micro$oft
PowerPoint 2010, a couple with PowerPoint 2007, and only one with
LibreOffice 3.5. (Unfortunately switching all to LibreOffice is not
practical for numerous reasons that I wish weren't true, but beyond the
scope of this email.)

You will have far fewer headaches by obtaining an Office license for the one
machine that doesn't have it than to try to make all presentation programs
happy with whatever format is the least common denominator, unfortunately.

--
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com

[e-letter]

Hello,

My group is in the process of setting up a slideshow template, and
unfortunately for practical reasons need to save it as a PowerPoint
template.

The simplest solution: buy m$

My question is twofold:

(1) What are some of your experiences in opening and using PowerPoint
templates in LibreOffice? I prefer saving in the template in a format that
I
can reasonably expect good support for in LibreOffice.

Have you written to an m$ forum and asked them their experiences of
using odf templates in m$o?

(2) We prefer a format that is as future proof as possible (in terms of
consistent look and format using it between different software, Micro$oft
or
otherwise). With that in mind, which of the following would be a better
choice? Microsoft PowerPoint 97/Xp/2000/2003 Template (*.pot), Microsoft
PowerPoint 2007/2010 XML Template (*.potx), or Office Open XML Presentation
Template (*.potm; *.potx)?

This is total madness: who goes to a Toyota car shop and asks for
advice on the most appropriate Mercedes vans???

Our work environment consists mainly of computers running Micro$oft
PowerPoint 2010, a couple with PowerPoint 2007, and only one with
LibreOffice 3.5. (Unfortunately switching all to LibreOffice is not
practical for numerous reasons that I wish weren't true, but beyond the
scope of this email.)

LO is not an m$ product!

A company that cannot afford to pay m$ licences is not going to be in
existence for long...

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Blimey.  I guess the aim is to deter people from trying LO through sheer rudeness and unreasonable demands.

A good Toyota car-dealer would easily have sold a Toyota car to the person asking about mercs or at least would have left a good enough impression that the person might seek out a Toyota in the future.

Posts like e-letter's just convinces people to never try LO and to tell their friends about the awful service here. 
Regards from
Tom

[Villeroy]

Am 14.06.2012 22:44, Tom Davies wrote:

Hi
Blimey. I guess the aim is to deter people from trying LO through sheer rudeness and unreasonable demands.

A good Toyota car-dealer would easily have sold a Toyota car to the person asking about mercs or at least would have left a good enough impression that the person might seek out a Toyota in the future.

Posts like e-letter's just convinces people to never try LO and to tell their friends about the awful service here.
Regards from
Tom

Shut up if you can't contribute anything but sentiment.
It is the extremely bad quality of this product and lack of competent user support which deters users.

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Exactly what did e-letter's answer contribute?  Why attack my post and not his?
Regards from
Tom

[Villeroy]

AGAIN for the hundredths time: Because e-letter is perfectly right. Only MS
software can edit MS file formats simply because they tailor their file
format very tightly around their software.
LibO can export to the old binary formats in acceptable quality so this is
the one and only acceptable file format for collaboration with MSOffice
users. For finished documents not supposed to be edited anymore, PDF is the
perfect solution.
OOXML export is a non-feature. As a matter of fact it does not work. LibO
may break OOXML documents. It will take many many more releases until it
works as well as export to doc/xls/ppt.

Anybody who is confronted with MS files on a daily basis needs at least one
machine with MSOffice installed.
Any other Windows box should have the free MS Viewers installed so you can
really see how the documents look like.

Stop propagating your wishful thinking and unproven sentiment. It does not
help anybody. This is just embarrassing and has nothing to do with end user
support.

[Advrk_Aplmrkt]

Hello,

Thanks for Scott's and Tom's suggestions so far.

My motivation for the original question was that I prefer to keep the single
installation of LibreOffice 3.5 that exists in our group, if one of *.pot or
*.potx can work reasonably well in LibreOffice. I hope that LibreOffice will
become the main office suite, but again that is proving to be difficult in a
Microsoft dense environment.

If in the end it really doesn't work, then perhaps we will have to go with
e-letter's "simplest solution", which is to replace LibreOffice on that
machine with Microsoft Office.

e-letter's response may not be wrong, but I agree with Tom that rudeness is
neither required nor helpful, and will certainly not attract new users to
LibreOffice. I have a great desire to switch to LibreOffice and other Free
Software, and therefore will continue trying despite possible rude responses
to my best, honest attempt at asking questions. If my colleagues asked the
original question, they might have already been turned away and installed
Microsoft Office on that one machine.

I also believe Tom *did* contribute by making a suggestion, which I will try
(and also Scott's). Thanks again for all your responses!

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Thanks :)  Most people on this list are friendly and helpful.  Even though Andreas agreed with e-letter he (Andreas) still manages to put negative information in a much more polite and friendly way (except when addressing me personnally of course).

Yes, my suggestion was to keep an original long-term template in OpenDocument Format which is native to LibreOffice and many other Office Suites and programs.  Then use that to create an MS template and forget about the ODF one until the MS one breaks.  It will break because MS keep changing the way legacy things are rendered.  Then you have the original, that is in ODF and that may even be directly usable by MS by then.  (Just don't hold your breath waiting for them to fulfill their promise to support ODF! lol).

Regards from
Tom