SVG embedding in LibreOffice

users
#41

Nuno J. Silva wrote (10-06-11 20:08)

I apologize for making it harder for you to keep up, by adding another
message to the thread! :slight_smile:

LOL :slight_smile:

But I'm curious about the windows-only bit.

Well, that's something I happened to see, since I'm cc'ed on the OOo isue about this. The (prev.) responsible dev. stated that indeed there is a library involved. I guess Gary will come up with details.

Cheers,

#42

Oh, found it: OOo bug 49991.

ka's answer explains it, just a missing library.

Thanks!

#43

Hi :slight_smile:
I don't think there is a definite final answer yet. It seems that Svg work is
scheduled for Googles' Summer of Code (GSoC). So, hopefully it wont get worked
on before that :wink: lol. Otherwise they'll have to re-schedule what they are
doing for GSoC.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#44

Tom

Thanks - I have posted the request below today - I will let you know if I get a response.

I note that on the new IBM Lotus Symphony Web site - this has to be the most angered and fought for request (1000's), but IBM have now disowned its own software in favour of making the new cut down 3 progs suit "not compatible", OOo used to!, but LibreOffice have taken up the challenge in as much as LO can read the files - although the original formatting is a bit hit and miss.

>>>>>>>>>>>

[wish-list]

/There must be 10's of thousands of Lotus Smart Suite users who use Lotus Wordpro who cannot move (locked in) to any other software because of a brilliant internal tab filing structure within wordpro. This is where you can put standard tabs inside Group tabs.

Because Libreoffice thankfully support Lotus Smart Suite documents (and IBM no longer do), you would be the natural inheritor for all these folk.

At the moment I am not aware of any other software that even have tab documents within a Word processor so you would be unique.

One tab can be for any amount of pages (also called a division).

The beauty of tab documents is that in one file you can have all the documents for say one client, one book etc. laid out in say years +2011, +2010 ..... +1995 or chapters etc. and inside (by clicking the +) the group tab opens up and you can have inside other tabs for all that years correspondence or headings or whatever etc).

Now by having them all in one file, then a document produced in say 2000 is not archived or deleted as every time a new document is added the whole file is updated to the current date, so backing up by current date massively improves.

I have files on current clients that go back to 1991, the "+" means that it is a "group tab" and that there are other tabs inside (and maybe more inside them) etc., Hence its an effective filing structure to handle multi documents.

I have group tabs that go like this "+1990's" > "+1991" > "Contracts" > (then a single tab "12/03/91"

Hence, you can also go straight to a division, click on it and Print it as a separate item. You can copy & paste, insert, you can move a tab, (like making it the 1st or last page(s) in a document.

The problem now is that if a Wordpro document, fully tabbed with say 10 - 1000 Tabs and by transferring it to LibreOfice it just becomes an unmanageable 10 to say 10,000 pages, with no structure.

Managing large documents or many documents over a long period of time becomes achievable with Tabs (divisions)

I would have thought that this would be useful in any word processor. Please consider this

Thank you

John Brassington
/

#45

If you visit the bug report site, you will see I have filed several bugs
on this issue. They cannot implement WordPro tabs until they implement
WordPro windows for documents. Right now they have taken the brain dead
Microsoft approach of having each document as a tab.

#46

Dear Roland

It reminds me of that Guinness Ad on "Cold Guinness" where the barman says "your the 15th person today I've told that there is no call for Cold Guinness".

I remember the 1st time I saw Lotus Smart Suite, this chap had just 2 files - Private and Business, he opened up the private one and inside were group tabs saying [+Gas], [+Electricity] etc - it thought "of course", it was like a Eureka moment.

Ask any other software user to find a current client document from 6 months ago let alone 10, 20 years ago!; And of course if you have a client called "Fred Bloggs" you don't have to think up new file names each time you send a new letter such a "fred_blogs_fax_17_06_11_reply_London_office".

I am assuming the "they" you refer to, is IBM

thanks

John B

#47

Dear John,

uh-oh...that sounds like an ominous opening! <Grin>

Actually, the "they" I refer to is every other word processor on the
face of the planet.

I never abused/relied on the tab system as a document control
architecture. I used it to segregate out the portions of a writing
project. Each chapter had its own tab, various tabs had notes and
clippings from other sources, etc. You could re-arrange the tabs and
put together a perfect book by tagging which tabs printed and which
didn't. It was a mind blowing architecture.

I don't have problems finding client documents which are 20 years old.
I create a directory for each client. If I don't do any billable work
for that client in 6 years, I simply delete the directory during the
next OS/machine upgrade.

#48

Dear Roland

My mistake, I thought that /[the brain dead//Microsoft//approach of having each document as a tab]/ refers to Lotus Symphony which loads each document in as a separate (big fat pointless) tab - as that is the only word software program I know, that uses those tabs (hence, what do I know!).

Whilst I might think Tabs / divisions are a must have, maybe, this should be a bolt on in LibreOffice (for Smartsuite users) and not a bloat on.

My eldest son, now uses Smartsuite (an MS convert) to swing proposals around and he is also writing his 1st book. [chapter 1] [chapter 2]....

Actually, one of the things I would miss would be not to have the ability to change the page settings in each division, how do people cope?

Calling all bolt on programmers!

regards

John

#49

Dear John,

It will not work as a bolt on. I really really REALLY thought IBM was
finally going to sort this out, since they have the ENTIRE WordPro file
specification. The OpenDocument file format has to have many things
added to it in order to support tabbed document divisions. Mainly, it
has to have XML to identify those divisions as completely separate "sub
documents" which only allow a small amount of things to carry over from
the parent/enclosing document. Each "subdocument" has its own flags to
support current page number, print/hide, previous/next subdocs, etc.

Eliminating the existing tabs and replacing them with the Window menu
item IS only a programming change. It doesn't require any change to the
file specification.

Between the above programming change and the tabbed document
specification enhancement, the OpenDocument format MUST add complete
support for embedding ALL fonts used in the document within the document
file. WordPerfect had this feature for decades, and that is one of the
major reasons WordPerfect took so long to disappear from the market
place, even though it kept charging $400+ for its product. That one
little feature, combined with turning off the system wide setting for
auto-format-for-default-printer, made a WordPerfect document completely
portable.

First we have to remove the ugly/nasty/useless tab interface.
Then we have to make documents 100% portable.
Then we can add tabbed document divisions just like WordPro.

#50

Hmm... I'm not actually sure what this WordPro feature looks like (never
seen WordPro in action), but maybe there are ways to achieve something
similar in LibreOffce:

- simplest: Use headings to navigate longer documents. Not suitable for filed letters and stuff, but for longer documents with chapters very nice. You get a chapter list in the navigator (F5) and can jump between them.

- also simple way to view different parts of the same document at once: Window -> New window
This opens a new window for the same window, the contents are identical, but you can view different parts of the document at the same time.

- Use different regions for different "tabs". Insert->region
   Each region can have different page or column layouts,and so on, but will share format and page templates. Also, the navigator shows different regions, and you can jump between them

- Use a global document (see also LO help for Global documents). You can have several documents and link them into one global document. There, they share the same format templates, the single documents are displayed as regions, and they can (but do not have to) be read-only. A doubleclick opens the original file for editing. So you could link all documents regarding one client/case into one global document, so you can print them all at once, or skip through them quickly or whatever it is you do with those documents.
Global documents are also nice for very large pieces of work (books or image-heavy documents. You can edit the single parts independently, without having to load and handle the whole monster at once, then look at it in all its glory in the global document. You can even create a new sub-document from within the global document (but you'll need to give it a filename)

All of this is probably not the same you're used to having, and porting existing docs over is not likely easy. but it might work to achieve a similar effect as the one you're describing.

... but why are you posting this in the "SVG embedding" thread? :slight_smile:

Zak

#51

So what is the decision on the svg embedding? For me at lest SVG
support is even more important than EPS support.

Todd

Hi :slight_smile:
I don't think there is a definite final answer yet. It seems that Svg work is
scheduled for Googles' Summer of Code (GSoC).

The GSoC work is SVG export (not a bad thing to have, either, and at least SVG should be able to contain everything that LO makes, so that is one problem less that SVG export has compared to "import" (read conversion).
I saw a commetn from Thorsten Behrens in the bugtracker somwhere ... ah, here:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31460

So there seems to be light, but unless there's a proper statement we won't know.

Zak

#52

It won't be anywhere near close. Get a copy of SmartSuit 98 or later
and see what a word processor was supposed to be.

#53

Hi Roland,

It won't be anywhere near close. Get a copy of SmartSuit 98 or later
and see what a word processor was supposed to be.

Shame that such good functionality was left by the wayside by IBM...coz
it was damned handy !!

Alex

#54

Dear Roland, Tom & Alex

Wow! - I actually just received a reply (Below) from the bug site:- there was me thinking all that was required was hidden extra code at the top of every page "Am I a tabbed page or not?" if so "what is my name", "do I belong to a group", "My tab is green" - simples

I am not a programmer!

But, I am more than delighted to get a response from such a source, even though, not the hopeful one I would have wished for.

Its a bit like:- If you need BOLD, just put it through the printer twice

I guess Roland, from you comments you must have received a similar response to your bug reports?

So - Any Volunteers?

Regards

John B

>>>>

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38401

--- Comment #1 from Michael Meeks<michael.meeks@novell.com> 2011-06-20 07:36:10 PDT ---
IMHO implementing the tab feature would take quite some work here, instead it
might be good to insert a set of links in the document at the top to allow
quick jumping to the various sections;

But of course, this is all work. Lets see if some volunteer jumps in to do it -
otherwise if you pay someone to do the work, you can have it done as you like I
guess.

#55

Hi :slight_smile:

It is great to get an answer. It's only a first response so don't assume that
is "written in stone". There are a lot of devs and a lot of work to be done so
things are changing all the time in a good way :slight_smile:

Good first responses are usually give a quick work-around or indicate the level
of complexity, or how long it might take, or to gather more information.

Michael's initial response gives 2 work-arounds
1. using links to get the functionality fast. It's not the long-term answer.
2. Another option for corporates might be to get one of their programmers onto
it, depending on urgency. You are not a corporate and not a programmer yourself
so ignore this one.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#56

I have not received any response (that I know of) from the bug site
regarding WordPro tabs.