[Orgmode] Re: [ANN] OpenDocumentText/OpenOffice Exporter - 0.6 Release

[Jambunathan K]

Gary

Thanks for trying out org-odt and sharing your feedback.

> I just joined the list recently and am very excited to try direct odt
> export!  I checked out Jambunathan's git repo.  I'm already running
> org-mode from its git master; is your repo a fork of the master, or
> is it its own thing?  It seems like it contains everything, so I
> should use it instead of the main one?

It's a fork of the master. It may lag behind the master depending on my
whims and fancies.

>
> Once I enabled png images in my Windows emacs (by copying the
> appropriate DLLs), the following worked fine for me in my .emacs:
>
> #+begin_example
> ;; Org-mode ODT (Open Document) export, EXPERIMENTAL:
> (custom-set-variables
>  '(org-export-latex-default-packages-alist (quote (("AUTO" "inputenc"
> t))))
>  '(org-export-with-LaTeX-fragments (quote dvipng))
>  )
> (setq org-odt-base-dir "c:/Program Files (x86)/emacs/site-lisp/
> org-jambu") ; only used for odt export
> (load-file (expand-file-name "contrib/odt/setup.el"
> org-odt-base-dir))
> #+end_example
>

LaTeX related lines are required only if there are LaTeX fragments (like
equations) which need to be embedded in to the resulting odt file. I
have included these lines only because the test.org file that I use for
testing has embedded LaTeX fragments.

As you noted above, setup.el changes the load-path and has pointers to
default styles file used for export.

> I suppose one addition would be to allow for customized ODT character
> and paragraph styles, e.g. customizing the styles.xml that gets
> included into the doc.

FYI, many of the user-defined styles used by the exporter have `org'
prefix.

Updating styles file either from a sample .odt file or .ott files is
something in my list. Till such time as I add support for this feature
one can use the following workaround:

1. customize the different styles in exported file and save it.
2. unzip the resulting odt file (Note: odt files are just .zip files)
   and extract styles.xml file from the same.
3. Customize the variable org-export-odt-styles-file to point to the
   above styles file.

The above procedure should work though I haven't tried this myself.

For the sake of record, many folks using `older version of emacs' have
reported `delete-directory' related crashes while trying my exporter. I
have pushed a fix for this a few minutes ago.

Jambunathan K.