help developing an editor to view openoffice files.

[Colin J. Williams]

Ken Starks wrote:
> krishnakant Mane wrote:
>> hello,
>> right now I am involved on doing a very important accessibility work.
>> as many people may or may not know that I am a visually handicap
>> person and work a lot on accessibility.  the main issue at hand is to
>> create an accessible editor for open office.
>> there are a lot of things remaining on that front.
>> so right now I am trying to find out a temporary work around by
>> creating a simple accessible editor (with wxpython) for viewing and
>> editing open office files.
>> I know there must be python libraries that can open/ save .odt files
>> because it is an open standard any ways.
>> but I am trying to work out a kind of a program where those files can
>> also be displayed in a text area with all the formatting.
>> probably one way of doing it is to use some thing like a rich text
>> editor and allow the file to be converted to rtf from odt for viewing
>> and back again to odt when the user wishes to save it.
>> another way I find is to actually find out if there is a odt text box
>> that can display these files as they are.
>> viewing the contents of the files in an editable way is most important.
>> any suggestions?
>> regards.
>> Krishnakant.
> 
> There is an O'Reilly Book about hacking the Open Office Format, and
> it is available free on line in both html and pdf.
More expensive but well reviewed is:
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/013148205X/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/103-7133293-6391046?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Colin W.
> 
> Open office files are a variation on 'Zipped' archives and
> many unzip tools can be used to open them, apart from ones
> that insist on a .zip extension. These include python tools.
> 
> The one 'case study' in the book that uses python is actually for
> a spreadsheet, but that makes little difference to the
> 'unzipping' part.  You can find it at:
> 
> http://books.evc-cit.info/odbook/ch05.html#modify-spreadsheet-section
> 
> Once you have the raw XML you should be able to convert it to any one of
> many more accessible XML formats, for screen readers, brail
> printers and so on. I don't know much about them, but hopefully you
> do!
> 
> Don't re-invent the wheel! You will find quite a few ways on the Open
> Office Wiki for converting the format to other things. You can also
> daisy-tail the XSLT files; for example use one to convert to xhtml and
> a second that converts xhtml to text.
> 
> Example (Display write files in the 'Firefox' browser).
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Firefox_ODFReader_extension
> 
> 
> Don't forget that Open Office already has PDF export facilities, and
> Acrobat reader already has some accessibility ability for simple 
> documents (i.e single column, 'start at the beginning, keep going until
> you get to the end, and then stop'). For adding structure to other PDF 
> files you would need Acrobat Professional or software that can export 
> 'tagged' PDFs.
> 
> The case-study code is:
> 
> import xml.dom
> import xml.dom.ext
> import xml.dom.minidom
> import xml.parsers.expat
> import sys
> import od_number
> from zipfile import *
> from StringIO import *
> 
> if (len(sys.argv) == 4):
> 
>      #   Open an existing OpenDocument file
>      #
>      inFile = ZipFile( sys.argv[1] )
> 
>      #   ...and a brand new output file
>      #
>      outFile = ZipFile( sys.argv[2], "w", ZIP_DEFLATED );
> 
>      getParameters( sys.argv[3] )
> 
>      #
>      #   modify all appropriate currency styles
>      #
>      fixCurrency( "styles.xml" )
>      fixCurrency( "content.xml" )
> 
>      #
>      #   copy the manifest
>      #
>      copyManifest( )
> 
>      inFile.close
>      outFile.close
> else:
>      print "Usage: " + sys.argv[0] + " inputfile outputfile parameterfile"