Support for Diff of OpenDocument files

[Jay]

OpenOffice OpenDocument format is already an established document format consisting of seperate xml, binary and meta files zipped into a single containter with different file extension (.odt .ods etc) for the different applications.

How do you store these under VersionControl and support Diff Viewing, Merging etc?

[Jay]

A current work-around for this is to store all OpenDocument files as a Flat xml file (single xml text document unzippped) with all files and represented as xml entries, using the OpenOffice XSLT filters.

Adapted from: ​http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=3772

Install in OpenOffice 2.0 macro "My Macros/Standard/MyConversions"

• attachment:MyConversions.bas​

Add OpenOffice 2.0 "XML Filter Settings" :

• attachment:XMLFilterSettings1.jpg​
• attachment:XMLFilterSettings2.jpg

Create batch file to convert all those *.doc you want to convert:

• attachment:conv2ooo.bat​

Send all your MSOffice *.doc files to batch convert using Command line or Windows File association: "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.0\program\soffice.exe" macro:///Standard.MyConversions.SaveAsOOOFlat("%1")

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See Also

​http://trac.opendocumentfellowship.org/odfviewer/wiki/WikiStart ​http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=3772

[Jay]

OpenOffice FlatXMLFilter:

• attachment:flat-xml-text.xsl​

Oh dear, server dies when i try to add attachments :(

[Jay]

OpenOffice Basic macro

[Jay]

OpenOffice Flat XML Filter

[Jay]

Batch file to help with multiple file conversions

[anonymous]

Hi, I also worked on allowing source-control using flat XML documents in OpenOffice, starting from the same topic on oooforum.org.

I now have an XSLT stylesheet for export that, in addition to flatting out the OpenOffice Text doc to an XML, will remove optional elements/attributes that changes from a save to another and have no impact on the rendering of the document - things like current viewing position, printer settings, current fields values - but would break attempts by the source control system to merge two versions of the document.

I'm at a point where merges are working well, if some strict rules are followed while editing. The biggest constraint is the automatic styles generated by manual insertion of italics/bold/font types and sizes, etc. All those things must be done by using named styles.

New tables and list uses automatic styles for each entry by default: "Default Formatting" must be applied to it's content before saving. I know that OpenOffice contributors are looking into defining Table styles, right now, even if using AutoFormat, a new automatic style is created for each table.

poutinedevicto

[Jay]

poutinedevicto,

Any chance you could add your XSLT style sheet as an attachment here?

It would be very useful.

Regards, Jay.