OOPDFBuilder
NOTE:
This page is no longer maintained.
Some of the OOPDFBuilder functionality were added to the OOo 2.0 core code.
A brief description of my code contribution to OOo is available here.
The protection feature (Security Tab on the PDF Export Options dialog) was added by me in the OOo 2.0 core code.
Job details can be seen in the issue 12626.
The PDF Export Filter specification (file OOo) can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org site.
beppec56 at openoffice dot org.
Current version: 0.9.45. (2004-05-18)
This page is a very short description of the OOPDFBuilder JavaTM application used to generate the PDF files from Open Office Writer documents.
This application is under GPL so:
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Summary:
What it does
If an outline of the chapters
exists (Tools |
Outline Numbering.. in Open Office menu), it generates the outline for
the PDF file reader (the left bookmark pane in the reader);
it converts the Hyperlink in
links internal to
PDF document if they are internal in the Writer document, being them in
the main text, or in tables or in frames, the type of presentation in
PDF is selectable (the way it is visualized and highlighted);
it converts the Internet
hyperlink in the
document to Internet hyperlink. If the link is in the form someone@somedomain.dom
it is converted in a call to the Internet browser to open the default
mailer to send the mail;
the references are converted
to links, with some
small defects if they are in a table or in a frame and span more than a
line, see Limits and Known Bugs, again the presentation is selectable;
the notes are converted to
PDF annotation, the
color and the icon type can be chosen;
the footnotes are double
linked with their
corresponding text, using the presentation of the references;
the OOo bookmarks in a
document can be used as
targets from another PDF document, with this option intra-document
links can be generated;
the document information:
keywords, title,
subject, creation date, author and modification date are collected as
well;
the pdf document can be
password protected, to
do this you'll need an additional JavaTM package
that can be downloaded from here: http://www.lowagie.com/iText/download/.
, download the Compiled code jar1(PDF/HTML) Follow
the directions in the OOPdfBuilder manual to install it.
What it does not do
It does not generate the
thumbnails if used with
Ghostscript, but Acrobat® Reader® 5.1 and up generates
them “on the fly” while reading the PDF document;
it does not generate the
links for the index of
figures and of tables, because Open Office does not generate them. This
could be improved if the index of illustrations and tables are
generated as a list of references, in the manual there is an example;
it does not generates links
to endnotes, because
the page where the endnote text lives seems not reachable through the
cursor programmatically.
There are some drawbacks
If the hyperlink or reference
spans more than
two lines of text only the first and the last are converted;
the PDF creation of the
current open document
cannot distinguishes among documents, so it can only be used with one
opened document at a time;
the references in tables and
in frames are not
generated very well, some work yet to be done checking the table cell
or frame paragraph limits. This doesn't happen if the reference does
not span more than a line of text or if the link is generated from a
hyperlink;
sometimes Open Office (1.1.1)
crashes at the end
of the job, especially with long document, this is true especially when
generating named destinations from bookmarks;
if the view PDF option is
used, the Java(tm)
application stays running, waiting for the viewer application to close.
If the reader was already active when the view PDF action was launched
by the application at the end of PDF generation, this behavior is not
observed.
This happens in Windows(tm) environments. In order to avoid this the
possibility of starting a short launching task was added;
the manual needs updating.
Last changes
0.9.45
added the possibility to
password protect a PDF
file, for example a file generated with OpenOffice.org itself (Export
to PDF);
the default resource
initialization to English
wasn't working correctly, now it should.
0.9.43
corrected outline generation,
some headers where
not detected correctly
added default initialization
of the language
resources to English.
added a selection to debug
the document being
processed
0.9.36
added English to Italian
translations.
0.9.33
Partly corrected the rounding
problem of link
position in large document
added PDF linearization for
web display (through
Ghostscript)
added cross-document linking
possibility
added password protection,
through an external
Java library
started to add the multi
language support,
English and Italian
added stability to the
application, in
conjunction with OOo 1.1.1
0.9.21
Major changes in the pdfmark
generation engine,
I got some hints from Martin W Brown macro code,
the application appears
slightly more stable,
used a new method to scan the
OO document for
links.
the document is printed
before pdfmark
generation.
Download
If you only need upgrade the jar package, you can simply download it OOPdfBuilder.jar (162 kbyte).
To learn more, you may download the zipped PDF manual/specification ( OOPdfBuilderSpec_en.zip, 317 kbyte).
Or, if you prefer, you can download the byte code and the specification above, Java source included under GPL license.
(OOPDFBuilder.0.9.45.zip file, 1,194 kbyte).
Support
to have some support, the “[PDF]” (without quotes) is added to the subject, so the mail will be routed correctly and, please, use only text mail.
Next in the stack
Check it in other document
languages.
Converting files recursively
in directories.
Add PDF article thread
generation.
Legal stuff
Trademarks
Adobe, Acrobat, PDFMaker, PDFWriter, Distiller, PostScript are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
GhostScript is a registered trademark of Artifex Software Inc.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Interesting links
The Open Office official site.
Another PDF generation macro (OpenOffice macro language).
A lot of OpenOffice macros in SourceForge.
The Andrew Pitonyak site (very good for macro learning).
The Java(tm) package to protect the PDF files
with
questions or comments about this web site.
English
site last modified: 