Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 8:33 am Post subject: exporting draw objects?
I am messing around with Neooffice/J 0.8.4 to see if we can use some open source tools to create some simple diagrams for a physics class with some hope that in the future they will not have to be re-created each time someone wants to make a change.
We have a student on a Windows machine running StarOffice 7 creating diagrams, an a professor running Mac OS X putting together her lectures in LaTeX (Texshop with Gerben's iInstaller version of TeX). Thus she can use various graphic formats for inclusion in her work - PNG, PDF, or EPS via epstopdf.
Fortunately Neooffice/J can export to PNG or EPS, so things should be great, eh? Well, they are a bit less than optimal.
Using the File->Export command, both PNG and EPS produce exported files that contain the entire original file, including the entire "background" piece of paper. If I want to select only one or a few of the drawn items, it seems I have to create a seperate file in NO/J and export the entire page. If I want a resultant image that is not 8.5x11 I have to first create the correct "page size" before I start the drawing, since altering the page size after the drawing is done seems to mess up the size and position of the already drawn items.
So, does anyone know if there is an easier way to get NO/J to export only the selected items? Does OOo do this better? This thread seems to imply that the File->Export command should work with just the selected objects, but that doesn't seem to be the case with NO/J.
Yes, the export definitely works differently under 1.1.x. There I can select an individual draw object (or multiple ones) and export just it/them to PNG, no rest of the page included (just some white space around any non-rectangular portions).
Thanks for posting, because in investigating this, I finally figured out how to extract complex (i.e., multi-item/part) "Word art" I get in Word documents and make these drawings into exportable formats (imperfectly; text boxes seem to be lost, and if there are too many parts...). The trick seems to be to select one object and OOo/NeoJ will switch to the draw tools; then drag a selection and copy/paste into a Draw document for export.
If only people on that other OS would choose the right tools for the job.... Incidentally, it's a shame that the person drawing your diagrams is on that other platform; I've been particularly impressed with OmniGraffle (which Apple has bundled with many new Macs) for drawings/diagrams which don't demand Illustrator complexity.
OK, I'm rambling. The short of it is, until Patrick completes the lengthy process of moving NeoJ to the 1.1.2 codebase, to get this feature you'll need to run 1.1.2 in X11 or seek another work-around
Joined: Jul 09, 2004 Posts: 2 Location: Peterborough, ON
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 8:04 pm Post subject: Thanks for the info!
sardisson wrote:
Yes, the export definitely works differently under 1.1.x. There I can select an individual draw object (or multiple ones) and export just it/them to PNG, no rest of the page included (just some white space around any non-rectangular portions).
Well, that's not too bad then. I will see she finds using OOo too much of a pest, or maybe just have the student do the exporting to EPS in StarOffice (which I assume has similar abilities). The latter should be popular, anything that one can unload on the "peons" is always good.
sardisson wrote:
Incidentally, it's a shame that the person drawing your diagrams is on that other platform; I've been particularly impressed with OmniGraffle (which Apple has bundled with many new Macs) for drawings/diagrams which don't demand Illustrator complexity.
I have heard good things about OmniGraffle, but I am very keen on keeping the "archive" version of the vector graphics files in some sort of "open" file format. SVG would seem to be the desired way to go, but there doesn't yet seem to be enough applications on enough platforms that can both import and export SVG format files. The OOo file formats at least seem to be well documented and have the promise of a long future lifespan.
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