Open Office to Joomla! component

Hi all, I'm gonna be a bit long but I'd like to introduce something that imho would be quite helpfull.

Eight (or 9) years ago -time flies- I went to a conference in London to know more about CMS's. I ended up at the Excel Exhibition Center in London Docklands.

I was there for a little Brussels-based not-for-profit organisation and saw what Vignette, Red Dot (I believe both now merged into OpenText) or Documentum could do among others. What amazed me was that those systems could publish from front-end directly to the site (Red Dot was very good at that they had a "Don't Make Me Think" kinda approach). Also Documentum had struck me with the way they managed all the... documentation. Then I started inquiring about prices and that's where the story ends, waaaaaay to expensive for a little organisation. I returned to Belgium with a lot of ideas and quite convinced that CMS and publishing from your desktop "with one button" was the future of websites. But from thought to reality well...

Time has passed and CMS's are here, Joomla! is here but I still lack the "with one button" from desktop feature. Why do I lack that? Well actually it is not so much for me, but for my clients, they are from little organisations and can't afford a webmaster or at least a tech-savvy person to maintain the site (for this purpose let's call somebody how can use a text-editor in the backend or look at some basic html 'tech-savvy'). This may sound odd to a lot of us but actually people don't have the time/energy/knowledge to publish a simple article, let alone play with Joomla! They simply "forget" what you learned them (mainly because they don't use Joomla on a daily-basis and they are not tech-oriented pple). Even when those kinds of organisations do send somebody to learn the system they either don't use it enough or they simply leave the organisation after a while. When I say organisations I also include little/medium companies and some governemental sites (it's amazing how sometimes they lack people to do this kind of job).

Today I still think that a "with one button" approach will bring a lot more people to maintain websites (and subsequently bring directly their knowledge to the web) then what is happening nowadays. Yet again, reality shows us that the learning curve is just to steap for some. They can send emails, they can write documents and they can do their jobs, but they can't publish a page. So the question: what can they do? Well, I've been seeing more and more cities/regions/countries saying "we, by law, declare that we shall use Open Source". Very good point imho.

Reality check: What actually happens is they switch from MS Office to Open Office and they stop using Outlook for something else (web-based or not). In the end, they learn to use Open Office after moaning a lot about how this and that, but they eventually use it. So we have a huge -and growing- base of people using Open Office. Keep cool, I'm almost getting to my point here, which is publishing from Open Office to the web. Been there, done that. Granted, but publish from Open Office with 'one button' into Joomla is a cool idea. (if well done and secure ;-)

I'm not trying to imply that I want a full ECM (closed source or Alfresco-like) let alone an ERP but I think it would by a great addition to Joomla or any other CMS.

All that said, a very good friend of mine, who also happens to be a great coder, Philippe, thinks the same. So we've been talking about this issue for some time now. Finally he has come with (more then) an approach to a solution. I'd like to share it here with you and hear about your thoughts on it.

He has posted a video on youtube showing what he's up to. He actually wants to build a component which he calls "com_odt2article" (see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKE0VF23zyE )

The steps:

Part one : Open Office

1.1 how to create an article with Open Office from a template

1.2 how to create and "format" the article content

1.3 how to add meta-datas

Part two : Joomla! :

2.1 create a new article

2.2 click on the "importer" plugin

2.3 select the article in the list of the ftp-articles list

2.4 all meta-datas and fields of article are directly imported into joomla !

He needs help* (coding, ideas...) for :

a) OO's macros (checking ftp connexion security, adding web-services connection (micro-formatted datas, RDF, ...)

b) Php classes (checking security and improvements for classes : unzipper, xslt parser)

and help for the MVC component validation

Thank you for your feedbacks !

Marcos & (mainly) Philippe

PS-1 : this plugin and component will work fine with other CMS's like... Drupal ;-)

PS-2 : the importation works fine also with CCK such as "K2", (and the ODT importer component can fill customized fields : adding customized documents properties into OpenOffice, and get it back into the CCK fields...)

PS-3 : not in the video yet, but works : the inclusion of images in the OO's article, when you import the article into joomla, automatically the images are loaded in Joomla's image directory (original, thumb and resized image are created on the fly)...

PS-4 : making tests also with the Joomla 1.6 alpha-2 version...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stian Didriksen on February 8, 2010 at 5:44pm

Do it with the Nooku Framework, and you'll have it working on Drupal in the fture without even lifting a finger ;)

Cheers,
Stian (someone who works on the cross platform functionality for the nooku fw as a side-project)

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on February 8, 2010 at 8:37pm

That is *incredible*.

There are simply no good solutions for nice rich text editing -- and this is hitting all of those important points: edit in a document editor - not a Web page; upload *easily* - and resize those images automatically.

Nicholas mentioned that one last point - and that is all that crappy HTML that Word Processors add to the document. White list filtering can help with that, although people don't always understand why all the funky stuff they added is suddenly missing.

Thanks so very much for sharing this.

Permalink Reply by Thomas Kahl on February 12, 2010 at 10:49am

Hello,

i also think that OO to Joomla! would be a good thing. But there is already a nice solution for windows: Microsoft Live Writer together with the Movable Type XMLRPC Plugin. Works great - even thougt it is from Microsoft. Best feature: paste images and resize them - the resized version will be uploaded...

Thomas

Amy Stephen said:

That is *incredible*.

There are simply no good solutions for nice rich text editing -- and this is hitting all of those important points: edit in a document editor - not a Web page; upload *easily* - and resize those images automatically.

Nicholas mentioned that one last point - and that is all that crappy HTML that Word Processors add to the document. White list filtering can help with that, although people don't always understand why all the funky stuff they added is suddenly missing.

Thanks so very much for sharing this.

Permalink Reply by HarryB on February 12, 2010 at 11:07am

Use MS Livewriter with Joomla!, Drupal and Wordpress. In most cases, generates clean, valid html. Much better than any built-in GUI editor Ive seen lately or OO or Word too.

Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on February 14, 2010 at 11:05am

Thank you all for your valuable input, will force Philippe to read this ;)
Anyway he continues developing his thing, see latest video: "Odt2article getting a web service with open-office"
And calling for help on the component (he's stubborn) :p
philippe[dot] lambotte [AT] gmail [another dot] com
Cheers

Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on February 18, 2010 at 12:15pm

First thank you all again for your valuable input, I've grabbed Philippe and this is what I understood (he's a bit shy about his English)

@Nicholas
Enforcing people to honour formatting rules is an illusion. I'm editing crappy content every other week, for the same site, from the same person :)
Doing the same every week, hence this idea ;)
You're also absolutely right that when using a wysiwig editor (and also a word processor for the matter) people will mostly ignore formatting rules. The idea with people using OOO is that they either (1) format with styles (100% good) or not, if not then the ODT to HTML parser will use a XLST that will strip out all the non pre-formatted stuff (classes or elements allowed). It basically allows only the styles we let them (when saying we = the people using the components with settings) On top, we'll clean out everything with a classes library kinda framework that will output only valid XHTML. Let's not forget you can always edit your article with the 'normal' editor afterwards :)

@Thomas
Big prob with Microsoft Live Writer is that you need... windows, which is not a problem as such but also ads all the .net frameworks, ram, SQL compact blabla or... 7, which in effect will outcast all other users (Mac, Linux, Non updated Windows...). Thus a solution that can also be used on windows, but independent from it, sounds better imho. Anyway, thanks for the link, I had heard from it but didn't know it worked.

@HarryB
Yes, but OOO gives you dictionnaries, grammar, synonyms and much much more then no live editor can give you as such (if u want the same on a live editor you're game for quite a bit of js debugging to say the least :). But imho the most important point is the learning curve, once they know OOO they don't need to know anything else. In the second video you see how a OOO macro acts. Even if MS Livewriter IS better, it's not about the tools, it's about the people that are comfortable with theirs, and we all know that is a key factor you can change but... might take even more time then rewriting Joomla from scratch :P

@Alexander
The read-more is built-in. If you format the text correctly, it will assume that the read more functionnality comes after... the intro :) The XLST while parsing, sees intro "and hops" ads an "hr read more" to it. You can also use the summary function and have it transposed to Joomla, it's in the video.

The issue is adressed now cause Philippe works for a not for profit press agency (a social stuff) and he needed a solution for:
1) All must be automated, no intermediate tables or steps invloved, the journalists just can't do it (too difficult, lazzy, dumb, too smart, pick yours).
2) The articles must be on a ftp server so as the print guy can grab them and print them, that correctors also need to access the files, and finally it serves as a backup. All that are ODT files.
3) When the process is ok, Philippe grabs all the files and runs them through his component and publishes.

With this he actually does what I wanted, the 'one click publish' idea (ok it's an idea, it will proly be several clicks).
Well, anyway this is a WIP, hope we can come to Wiesbaden with a functionnal demo (well that's our not-so-hidden-anymore goal).

Permalink Reply by Ewout Wierda on May 10, 2010 at 4:18am

I was wondering if any progress has been made with this? It sounds very interesting, but I see that the functional demo is not on the Wiesbaden programme.

Using Live Writer seems to be a nice solution, but what I see as the advantages of using OpenOffice is that it is open source and the interface is actually more similar to the good old MS Office than that of recent MS Office versions.

What would also be great is if it works with FlexiContent. I suppose that would require custom ODT templates?

Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on May 11, 2010 at 5:27am

Hi Ewout,

We will (unfortunately) not be ready for a full functional demo for Wiesbaden. Nevertheless, Philippe will be there and I'm sure he will be more then happy to show you what has been done so far.
And you're right about flexicontent it will be on the odt template, but the same goes for k2 and/or zoo.
Anyway, this is something we care about and that our clients will be using so we're not dropping it.
See you in a few weeks, can't wait to be there!

Cheers
Marcos

Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on May 16, 2010 at 10:41am

Bumping this one a bit... + extra thoughts

Some facts:
Launch of Microsoft Office 2010 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/10109254.stm) and their strategy to compete with Google docs, through ao. http://docs.com (and if you're connected to facebook, he recognizes you instantly, creepy) using also SharePoint it is interesting to note that:

- Documents will be ported to websites in a blink of an eye (same as big ERP's were doing).
- This can happen if you buy MS products
- They will "give" a bunch of functionalities for free on the web (the catch)

So, were does that leaves CMS's? Without a big analysis of this and that it appears that we (Joomla!) need to step up that train very quickly. If web is about content (content is king blah blah..) then our system has to be bullet proof on that one. What is happening today? Very good systems exist (see reactions above as an example) but they all require savvy people to publish. If you unlock that (tiny) barrier you'll get even more contributions and content coming in. Look at people.joomla that attracted more then 1500 persons in 3 days (ok, a lot came from here but that is another story) and the interaction they're having because among other factors... it's easy to publish then you get a (big) new picture.

A lot is changing, it goes well beyond discussions about 1.6, comments or even Drupal Wordpress, it's the whole "how you publish on the net and share/communicate" that is shifting paradigms...

Another example is Belgium that has adopted a rule saying you must comply to OpenDocument format within public administrations. I'm not even talking about the EU and their push against MS on several fields...

I'm throwing these ideas here without too many thoughts but feel more and more convinced that the key to succes of any CMS (including Joomla) lies in its very-end-users.

Cheers

Permalink Reply by Ewout Wierda on May 17, 2010 at 10:17am

Thanks Marcos, I am looking forward to meeting Philippe in Wiesbaden!

Your thoughts are interesting, and now that you mention MS I wonder what the strategy was behind the signing of the JCA as a clear sign that MS wants to contribute. MS is looking into other CMSs too, so could it be that they are preparing for publishing to websites running 'compatible' CMSs from within Office? If so, I also wonder about the counterpart, being the ability to open a Joomla webpage from within Word. And most of all, if that is the direction things are going, I wonder if it would make sense for the big CMSs to sit together and create an open standard before a de facto standard puts open source software at a disadvantage.

Open Office to Joomla! component

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