You should read this book if you want to extract data from OpenDocument files, convert your data to OpenDocument format, or simply find out how the format works.
If you need to know absolutely everything about the OpenDocument format, you should download the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) 1.0 in PDF form from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12572/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf or as an OpenOffice.org 1.0 format file from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12028/office-spec-1.0-cd-3.sxw.. That document was a major source of reference for this book.
If you simply want to use OpenOffice.org or KOffice to create documents, you need only download the software from http://www.openoffice.org/ or http://www.koffice.org/ and start using it. There’s no need for you to know what’s going on behind the scenes unless you wish to satisfy your lively intellectual curiosity.
The examples in this book are written using a variety of tools and languages. I prefer to use open-source tools which work cross-platform, so most of the programming examples will be in Perl or Java. I use the Xalan XSLT processor, which you may find at http://xml.apache.org. All the examples in this book have been tested with OpenOffice.org version 1.9.100, Perl 5.8.0, and Xalan-J 2.6.0 on a Linux system using the SuSE 9.2 distribution. This is not to slight any other applications that use OpenDocument (such as KOffice) nor any other operating systems (MacOS X or Windows); it’s just that I used the tools at hand.
If you need to know absolutely everything about the OpenDocument format, you should download the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) 1.0 in PDF form from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12572/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf or as an OpenOffice.org 1.0 format file from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12028/office-spec-1.0-cd-3.sxw.. That document was a major source of reference for this book.
If you simply want to use OpenOffice.org or KOffice to create documents, you need only download the software from http://www.openoffice.org/ or http://www.koffice.org/ and start using it. There’s no need for you to know what’s going on behind the scenes unless you wish to satisfy your lively intellectual curiosity.
The examples in this book are written using a variety of tools and languages. I prefer to use open-source tools which work cross-platform, so most of the programming examples will be in Perl or Java. I use the Xalan XSLT processor, which you may find at http://xml.apache.org. All the examples in this book have been tested with OpenOffice.org version 1.9.100, Perl 5.8.0, and Xalan-J 2.6.0 on a Linux system using the SuSE 9.2 distribution. This is not to slight any other applications that use OpenDocument (such as KOffice) nor any other operating systems (MacOS X or Windows); it’s just that I used the tools at hand.
