Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Karl Voit]

Hello Giovanni!

* Giovanni Ridolfi <giovanni.ridolfi@yahoo.it> wrote:
> Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>
>
>> I thought that using the ODF-exporter would be the format of
>> choice to get content from Org to Word. Why do you guys prefer
>> HTML?
>
> A reason could be (in my case) because we cannot have LibreOffice
> installed :-(

No need to do that.

(Besides: there are portable-versions of LibreOffice[1] so that you
can install LibreOffice on any operating system having any kind of
reduced permissions. But this is not my point.)

> But you're right in remembering me that "write" (and perhaps
> word?) can read odf files.  I will try odf, thanks!

Yes, this was the thing I wanted to mention: Word is able to read in
ODF. And since ODF has a *way* more similar kind of "markup" to
docx, it should result in much better results than using HTML.

But: I never tried it by myself.

So I was wondering, if there are good arguments against using ODF in
the first place and using HTML as best choice.

  1. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=libreoffice+portable
-- 
Karl Voit

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Jambunathan K]

If one does ORG->HTML->DOC instead of ORG->ODT->DOC, following areas
could be problemsome.
- Footnotes
- Inlined images - do they end up right within the document or outside
  of it.

See:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/release-notes/
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.5#ODF_1.2_Conforming_Documents
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44498

,---- 
| Microsoft Office 2010 will complain that ODF 1.2 and extended documents
| written by LibreOffice 3.5 are invalid (but opens them still). This is a
| shortcoming in MSO2010 only supporting ODF 1.1, please see here for
| further details.
|
| ODF 1.2 Conforming Documents
| 
|     LibreOffice 3.5 writes valid ODF 1.2
| 
|     Microsoft Office only officially supports ODF 1.1 and complains that
|     ODF 1.2 and ODF 1.2 extended documents written by LibreOffice 3.5
|     are invalid.
| 
|     The warning from Microsoft Office can be safely ignored, and the
|     "Repair" option will import the document.
| 
|     For users that find this annoying, a workaround is to open
|     Tools->Options->Load/Save->General and set "ODF format version" to
|     "1.0/1.1". However, please note that this will cause some
|     information to be lost when storing documents.
`----

Instead of importing ODT documents right inside Microsoft Office, one
can have LibreOffice do the ODT->DOC(X) conversion and import the LO
created DOC(X) file in to Microsoft Office.

For creating DOC/DOCX/PDF files right from Org see Info node with
following title: (org) Extending ODT export.

ps: I have not used MS Word at all.
-- 

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Jambunathan K]

For people taking ORG->ODT->Microsoft Office they might want to give
particular attention to the formatting of

- Lists 
- Tables 

in the imported document.

My best guess is import will be troublefree for the most part.  Only
issues could be around the import of customized tables. i.e., tables
created with Info node: "(org) Customizing tables in ODT export".
-- 

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Karl Voit]

* Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Instead of importing ODT documents right inside Microsoft Office, one
> can have LibreOffice do the ODT->DOC(X) conversion and import the LO
> created DOC(X) file in to Microsoft Office.

As a side-mark to your great comments: LibreOffice (and
OpenOffice.org) is able to convert documents from command line without
having the need for opening them, invoking a save-as-process,
choosing a different format, and closing it.

If somebody needs to do (semi-automatically) conversions, take a
look into the command line option "--convert-to".

> For creating DOC/DOCX/PDF files right from Org see Info node with
> following title: (org) Extending ODT export.

Cool :-)

> ps: I have not used MS Word at all.

Never? Really? Wow ... Lucky you!

I once met a guy who was working in the IT industry since the
seventies and he never ever used MS Windows in his life. Impressive.
(His source code was completely crap but this is another story *g*)

-- 
Karl Voit

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Jambunathan K]

Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:

> * Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Instead of importing ODT documents right inside Microsoft Office, one
>> can have LibreOffice do the ODT->DOC(X) conversion and import the LO
>> created DOC(X) file in to Microsoft Office.
>
> As a side-mark to your great comments: LibreOffice (and
> OpenOffice.org) is able to convert documents from command line without
> having the need for opening them, invoking a save-as-process,
> choosing a different format, and closing it.
>
> If somebody needs to do (semi-automatically) conversions, take a
> look into the command line option "--convert-to".

M-x pp-eval-expresssion RET org-export-odt-convert-processes RET

will you give you this.  Note the first entry.

,---- C-h v org-export-odt-convert-processes
|   (("LibreOffice" "soffice --headless --convert-to %f%x --outdir %d %i")
|    ("unoconv" "unoconv -f %f -o %d %i"))
`----
-- 

Re: Using HTML or ODF to get content from Org to Word

[Luis Anaya]

emacs-orgmode-request@gnu.org writes:
>
> I am a bit puzzled. I thought that using the ODF-exporter would be
> the format of choice to get content from Org to Word. Why do you
> guys prefer HTML?

The following is my opinion why I prefer using HTML to ODF for transfer
to Word, but  there is no reason for not using ODF for transfer files.  
It is more a matter of personal taste than anything else. 

1. Mature support for HTML import on Word. ODF import was included in Office
2007 as an option. But HTML support has been available since Office
2000. (probably since Office '98, but it's been a while since I used
that one).  If you do not have the ODF facility installed in Word or 
if you're stuck with an older version of Office  then you have to 
convert to Word using Libre/Open Office.  That's an extra step and 
more conversion errors to add to the final result.  

2. Less nuances to worry about. HTML is clean and a plain ASCII format
at the expense of size.  I am not familiar with ODF's internal
structure, but I've worked on the generation of MS Open Office XML
documents at work.  Even though it's an XML format, there are sometimes 
difference in the positioning of elemements when documents are created
in Word vs  when they are created through a program using the MSOOXML
libraries. 

One issue I had during testing was the inclusion of images in
which they get installed on a different nodes if the document is created
through the .NET API. These causes images not to show up in
LibreOffice or AbiWord to crash. However they render fine in Word. 


My 2 cents...
-- 
Luis Anaya
papo anaya aroba hot mail punto com
"Do not use 100 words if you can say it in 10" - Yamamoto Tsunetomo