Re: [hylafax-users] [hylafax-devel] RFD - Business form overlays/merging

["Bernd Proissl" <lists@proissl.de>]

> > Let's face it . . . it's pretty tough to get a custom coverpage installed and running 
> > with HylaFAX presently. The eventual goal would be to replace HylaFAX's current 
> > coverpage-generation routines with this form-population technology. Therefore one of 
> > the requirements of any solution would be the ability to produce the form/template 
> > using some EASY! tool, which SHOULD run on UNIX but MUST run on Windows machines.
> 
> What about using open office as a form generator tool? I had a project where i did
> this with ms word and visual basic. word was used by the end user to create
> the form (including some markers as labels) and the VB application used word automation
> to fill in the data. this allowed the user to use all of word's formatting and editing stuff
> 
> open office has an interface so that it can be controller from an oustide app. I once had a look into
> this (star office 5.2) but it looked like that it will not be as easy as with word :(
> Maybe this has changed in the current open office, i do not know :(

open office uses XML to save it's documents so this might allow XSLT based form filling?
(maybe this is a starting point how to do it http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/ )

there seems to be lots of stuff how XML can be processed:
http://xml.openoffice.org/
http://xml.openoffice.org/filter/#4.1.OthersUses|outline
http://xml.openoffice.org/xfilter.html

There is also a jakarta project to read/write microsoft document files.
http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/
currently this allows to read/manipulate/write xls files but it is expected to
be expanded for doc also. (somewhere i read that POI is going to be the import
filter for oppen office) this would allow to create the template with word, save
it as doc and then import it in openoffice.

Bernd


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