OpenOffice does not produce HTML documents.

Matt Morgan matt.morgan-fedora-list at brooklynmuseum.org
Tue Aug 17 15:24:23 UTC 2004


On 08/17/2004 11:03 AM, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:

>On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 10:10:41AM -0400, Matt Morgan wrote:
>  
>
>>On 08/17/2004 09:57 AM, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I have discovered that OpenOffice is unable to produce viewable HTML
>>>pages from Word Documents.
>>>
>>>1. In FC1 the HTML document is unviewable because paragraphs come out
>>>as just one big line that does not wrap arroung properly.
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Let me ask three questions for clarity:
>>
>>1) I'm not 100% sure of what you're trying to do. It sounds like you 
>>have a *.doc that you're opening in OOo and saving as HTML. Is that right?
>>    
>>
>That is exactly  right.
>  
>
>>2) Have you looked at the resulting HTML code to see where the problem is?
>>    
>>
>Yes I have and can't really see a problem. The page size is set in the
><HEADER> to 8-1/2 by 11 which seems strange.
>  
>
>>3) What browser are you using to view the results?
>>    
>>
>
>Mozilla 1.4., Internet Explorer. They all have the same problem.
>  
>
>>Line wrapping is not set in HTML code but is handled by the browser, so 
>>it normally works with arbitrary window size (the line wraps at the edge 
>>of the window). So something non-standard is happening along the way, or 
>>maybe you've inadvertently gotten some <pre> codes in there that are 
>>forcing literal interpretation of the text.
>>    
>>
>
>I agree but it is not working here. I did not thing of looking for
><pre> code. Could you try to do it on your machine and let me know if
>it works for you. The point is that the OOo is failing. If I have to
>debug the code it proves it is not working.
>  
>
I tried a few different documents. This was not an exhaustive test, but 
I found: if OOo can open the document nicely, it can also create a good 
HTML replica of it. If OOo has trouble translating the Word formatting, 
then it makes bad HTML code, too.

I had exactly the problem you describe, with lines that don't wrap 
right, when I opened an MS-Word generated memo, using a table in the 
header, in OOo and saved it to HTML. The thing is, at least for me, OOo 
always has trouble with tables in Word documents, and in this case too, 
it was pretty clear something was going to end up wrong (because it 
looked terrible in OOo in the first place). In fact what it ultimately 
did in the HTML file was make a table of fixed width, which was exactly 
why line-wrapping was bad in this case.

Where are these .doc files coming from? If you re-save them as .sxw 
first does it make any difference? I'm afraid I'm not helping, sorry!





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