Pablo Endres' Blog » Open Office

ooimpress and .pps files

Pablo Endres — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:00:03 +0000

I’ve been working with Ubuntu lately at the day job and the Open Office setup is different than on Fedora. One special case is the opening of .pps files, which per default go into “presentation mode” which I normally hate to see (it just takes to long to see what you really what to see in the presentation.

This is a workaround I found around in the Web:
Create ~/bin/ooimpress-edit or if you want to use it system wide /usr/local/bin/ooimpress-edit; and add the following code into it

#!/bin/bash
ooimpress -n “$*”
exit

Use it when ever you think you need it. I set it up as default behaviour in the browser.

Enjoy

Transpose Open Office Calc data from rows to columns, or vice versa

Pablo Endres — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:45:57 +0000

I had to shift through a ton a data today and after I was have way through I realized that I would be easier to express and analyze the data if it was transposed o just filled in the other way around (rows and columns). On any other day or a different stage of the work I would have retyped it, but I got lazy and found this link and all you have to do is a special paste and check the transpose box.

Incredible!

The best thing is that it works both in M$ Office and Open Office.

Opensource replacement for Visio

Pablo Endres — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:37:35 +0000

I’ve been looking actively for an open source replacement for Visio, the programs work but the main weakness is the lack of the “stencils” or figures to make the diagrams. The artwork that I found is really lacking the help of a designer.

I checked out Dia 0.96.1 which I had used before and it works really good but as I stated before it lacks the artwork. The good thing is that there is hope, as stated in it’s web site: “It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.”

Open Office Draw 2.4.1 is also suitable for the job. I personally it is a little more limited than Dia for the job, but maybe it’s just my impression. As a drawing tool it is more complex and give you more for your Money effort like object rotation, and other effect.

Kvio 1.6.3 is also a nice tool. I have to say that it works really well. It’s light and has good handling of stencils, they get extra points because it automatically finds and uses the Dia stencils. The only thing I really don’t handle well yet is that all objects when placed on the sheet a TOO BIG.

Is there a chance that someone with good graphic skills opens an Open Source project to make some standard shapes or stencils that can be used by all 3 tools or any other tools that wants to use them. If a momentum is created it is also possible to make the Vendors want to publish their shapes in this standard format.