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Easy Way for Sharing OpenOffice.org Documents?
rekrutacja asks: "I'm trying to find easy way for reading OpenOffice.org documents in places where you can't (or don't want to) install the full OOo suite. I found an on-line reader, but I would like something for offline viewing. There is a Java-based standalone program that you can download from here, but I can't seem to get it running to my liking. OOo Lite/Reader/Viewer should be easy to install (especially for Windows) and I'd like it to be small enough to fit my 16MB pen-drive. Even a Firefox/IE plugin is better than nothing. Does anyone know of such a beast?"
Thank's, that is almost exactly what i was looking for. Small, easy to use and GPL-ed.
This Is Not a Sig
You're right about the open format thing being huge. I once wrote a piece of music using sequencing software that (unbeknownst to me, because I was not knowledgeable at the time) used a proprietary protocol. Years later, when I attempted to resurrect the file (the only copy of that particular song I could find was the original file backup) I couldn't find the sequencer program disk, nor could I purchase another (the company was out of business).
Ultimately, I was able to open it by begging random strangers via usenet, one of whom had the program and was kind enough to open it and save it as a MIDI file for me -- but it's not good policy to rely on the kindness of strangers (insert Blanche DuBois joke here).
For ordinary letters and even complex documents up to and including magazine articles, HTML is more than flexible enough to do what I want. OOo is a pretty reasonable HTML editor, and as well as it exporting stuff on demand, many programs will read and even edit or import HTML quite well. And web browsers are of course ubiquitous.
If you're writing a PhD thesis on maths or physics, or trying to lay out a business card (people even do this using spreadsheets, a printing shop I do business with has special epithets reserved for them) forget I ever set hand to keyboard, but for everyday stuff HTML is fine, almost overkill.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Problem is that HTML doesn't let the author of the document easily set the margins for printing. Which popular web browser supports the paged media extensions to CSS in a meaningful way?
I have never before had need for such a viewer so, I didn't know that it didn't exist yet. But, I am shocked that it doesn't exist! How hard would it be for a competent programmer to rip out the rendering component from Open Office and create a standalone viewer? I can't imaging that it would be difficult, relatively speaking. Open Office is open source after all, and the rendering code is freely available for copying.
From my viewpoint, there definitely needs to be such a viewer. It should be cross platform, or versions for each platform, and a browser plug-in would be a good idea too. If the viewers are available, you can then start distributing the documents and everyone can read them, not just Open Office users. Acrobat and Word have both been succesful with this scheme and I'm sure that Open Office could achieve greater penetration if it followed suit.