As all of you are hopefully by now as enthusiastic about the ODF@WWW as I am, and as all of you by now know how it works, I would like to give detailed instructions on how to install it.

The prerequisites are the following:

• A UNIX like operating system such as Linux or OpenSolaris.
• An Apache web server with WebDAV and ReWrite extensions installed.
• A Bourne compatible shell.
• A Make utility, I use GNU make, as this is my favorite.
• An OpenOffice.org suite on the client and on the server.
• A helper utility (JODConverter) downloadable from softpedia to convert ODF to HTML on the server.
• A recent Java, because JODConverter is implemented in Java, I use JDK1.6.
  

You need some documents and images to get started with the ODF Wiki.

• Some images for the buttons:
• "tbbtn.png" - The image of the "Edit..." button.
• "tbbtn-text.png" - The image of the "Edit Text Document..." button.
• "tbbtn-sheet.png" - The image of the "Edit Spreadsheet..." button.
• "tbbg.png" - The background image fo all buttons.

• Some basic documents explainning the usage and how to configure the browsers:
• "index.odt" - This is the start page.
• "context.odt" - This is the table of contents.
• "ClientSupport.odt" - This explains how to configure your web browser.
• "Usage.odt" - This gives a brief overview how to use the ODF Wiki.
• "aspread.ods" - An example spreadsheet.
• "atext.odt" - An example text document.
• "dummy.odt" - The template for generating new text documents.
• "dummy.ods" - The template for generating new spreadsheets.

Last but not least you need some glue code, to tie everything together.

• An "http.conf" file, enabling WevDAV in Apache as well as URL rewriting.
• Two scripts to be called by Apache,
• "convert.sh" for generating HTML on the fly, and
• "redirect-odf.sh" for generating redirections for the browser download.
• A makefile to be called by "convert.sh", which updates or generates HTML or ODF files on the fly.
• Three scripts to be called by make,
• "convert_odt.sh" converts an ".odt" file to HTML,
• "convert_ods.sh" converts an ".ods" file to HTML,
• "make_dummy.sh" creates a dummy HTML file offering "Edit as Textdocument" respectively "Edit as Spreadsheet".

For your safety&convenience I packed everything into a tar file to be downloaded from mediacast. On my system I use the following directories:

  "/var/www" - For all the content, e.g. the documents listed above.

  "/usr/lib/cgi-bin" - For all the scritpts, and finally ...

  "/etc/apache2/" - For the httpd.conf file.

I did unzip the JODConverter in the "/usr/lib/cgi-bin" directory for easy access. You may need to move the files to the appropriate directories and may slightly need to adapt them to match your system. I just needed to untar the "odf-at-www.tgz" in the root directory:

  > su -
  > cd /
  > tar -xvzf odf-at-www.tgz
  > apache2ctl restart
  > soffice -accept="socket,port=8100;urp;"

That's it ... I hope you enjoy it :*)

Best regards

     Kay

And here comes the code (without any warranty ;-) :

httpd.conf

  LoadModule dav_module     /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_dav.so 
  LoadModule dav_fs_module  /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_dav_fs.so
  LoadModule rewrite_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rewrite.so

  DAVLockDB /var/apache2/DAVLock
  <Directory /var/www>
    Dav On
    RewriteEngine On

    # Rewrite directory "/" to index.html, apply other rules.
    RewriteRule ^/$         /index.html [next]
    
    # Forward any html request to the converter.
    RewriteRule ^.*\.html$  cgi-bin/convert.sh       [PT=application/x-httpd-cgi]
  
    # Forward any odf indirector request to redirector.
    RewriteRule ^.*\.od.r$  cgi-bin/redirect-odf.sh [PT=application/x-httpd-cgi]
  </Directory>

convert.sh

  #!/bin/sh

  # Abort on error.
  set -e 

  # Save stdout and stderr.
  exec 6>&1
  exec 7>&2

  # Redirect stdout and stderr to log file.
  exec 2>&1 > /tmp/convert.sh.log

  # Do some logging.
  echo '********arg********\n' $* 
  echo '********env********\n' $(env)
  echo '********set********\n' $(set)
  echo '*******************'

  # The file we need to provide.
  file=$DOCUMENT_ROOT$REDIRECT_URL

  # Ensure that a HTML file is available.
  make -f convert.mk $file

  # Reset stdout redirection.
  exec 1>&6

  # Dump the content.
  echo "Content-Type: text/html"
  echo
  cat $file
  echo

redirect-odf.sh

  #!/bin/sh

  # Abort on error.
  set -e 

  # Save stdout and stderr
  exec 6>&1
  exec 7>&2

  # Redirect stdout and stderr to log file.
  exec 2>&1 > /tmp/redirect-odf.sh.log

  # Do some logging.
  echo '********arg********\n' $* 
  echo '********env********\n' $(env)
  echo '********set********\n' $(set)
  echo '*******************'

  # The documents base file name
  # is everything but the last 'r'.
  bfile=${REDIRECT_URL%r}

  # Ensure that an ODF file is available.
  make -f convert.mk "$DOCUMENT_ROOT$bfile"

  # Reset stdout redirection.
  exec 1>&6

  # Dump the content.
  echo "Content-Type: text/url"
  echo
  echo "http://$HTTP_HOST$bfile"

convert.mk

  # Don't delete any intermediates.
  .SECONDARY:

  # Create a '.html' from an '.ods'.
  %.html: %.ods
        ./convert_ods.sh $^ $@ $(notdir $*)

  # Create a '.html' from an '.odt'.
  %.html: %.odt
	./convert_odt.sh $^ $@ $(notdir $*)

  # Create a '.html' from template.
  %.html:
	./make_dummy.sh $(dir $@)/dummy.html $@ $(notdir $*) 


  # Create an '.odt' from template.
  %.odt:
  	cp $(dir $@)/dummy.odt $@

  # Create an '.ods' from template.
  %.ods:
	cp $(dir $@)/dummy.ods $@

convert_odt.sh

  #!/bin/sh

  # Abort on error.
  set -e 

  source=$1 ; shift
  target=$1 ; shift
  stem=$1   ; shift

  thisDir=$(dirname $0)/

  temp=$(mktemp)
  java -jar ${thisDir}jodconverter-2.2.1/lib/jodconverter-cli-2.2.1.jar $source $temp.html

  btemp=$(basename $temp)

  body_tag='<BODY LANG="en-US" DIR="LTR">'
  edit_tag='<div style="position: fixed; background: url('tbbg.png') repeat-x; height: 38px; left: 0%; 
    padding-left: 5px; width: 100%; top: 0px; bottom: 38px;">\n  <a href="http://'${HTTP_HOST}
    /${stem}.odtr'">\n    <img alt="Edit..." src="tbbtn.png" width="112" height="38" border="0" 
    longdesc="Edit document in OpenOffice.org"/>\n  </a>\n</div>\n<br>\n<br>'

  sed "s!smb://!http://!g"                     $temp.html | \
  sed "s!\.odt\"!\.html\"!g"                              | \
  sed "s!\.ods\"!\.html\"!g"                              | \
  sed "s!SRC=\"$btemp!SRC=\"$stem!g"                      | \
  sed "s!${body_tag}!${body_tag}${edit_tag}!"             > $target

  set +e
  files=$(ls ${temp}_html_*)
  set -e

  target_stem=${target%%.*}
  for file in $files ; do
    varpart=${file##*_}

    cp $file ${target_stem}_html_${varpart}
  done

convert_ods.sh

  #!/bin/sh

  # Abort on error.
  set -e 

  source=$1 ; shift
  target=$1 ; shift
  stem=$1   ; shift

  thisDir=$(dirname $0)/

  temp=$(mktemp)
  java -jar ${thisDir}jodconverter-2.2.1/lib/jodconverter-cli-2.2.1.jar $source $temp.html

  btemp=$(basename $temp)

  body_tag='<BODY TEXT="#000000">'
  edit_tag='<div style="position: fixed; background: url('tbbg.png') repeat-x; height: 38px; left: 0%;
    padding-left: 5px; width: 100%; top: 0px; bottom: 38px;">\n  <a href="http://'${HTTP_HOST}
    /${stem}.odsr'">\n    <img alt="Edit..." src="tbbtn.png" width="112" height="38" border="0" 
    longdesc="Edit document in OpenOffice.org"/>\n  </a>\n</div>\n<br>\n<br>
    \n<br>'

  sed "s!\.odt\"!\.html\"!g"                  $temp.html | \
  sed "s!\.ods\"!\.html\"!g"                             | \
  sed 's!file://!http://localhost!g'                     | \

  sed "s!SRC=\"$btemp!SRC=\"$stem!g"                     | \
  sed "s!${body_tag}!${body_tag}${edit_tag}!"            > $target

  set +e
  files=$(ls ${temp}_html_*)
  set -e

  target_stem=${target%%.*}
  for file in $files ; do
    varpart=${file##*_}

    cp $file ${target_stem}_html_${varpart}
  done

make_dummy.sh

  #!/bin/sh

  # Abort on error.
  set -e 

  # Save stdout and stderr
  exec 6>&1
  exec 7>&2

  # Redirect stdout and stderr to log file.
  exec 2>&1 > /tmp/make_dummy.sh.log

  # Do some logging.
  echo '********arg********\n' $* 
  echo '********env********\n' $(env)
  echo '********set********\n' $(set)
  echo '*******************'

  source=$1 ; shift
  target=$1 ; shift
  stem=$1   ; shift

  sed 's!localhost/dddddddd!'$HTTP_HOST/$stem'!g' $source > $target

tags: apache odf opendocument openoffice.org wiki

OpenOffice.org Beta 2 Release Candidate 1 build BEB300_m2 has been uploaded to the mirror network.
The version will install as OpenOffice.org 3.0.

As I expect another build I have uploaded the install sets for en-US only and added language packs to the extended mirrors.

Attention: unfortunately the Bouncer links linked from the download page do not work (yet).

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker and notify the OpenOffice.org releases mailing list.

Please take the following link:

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta2rc/index.html

Alternative download page:

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta2rc/index-nojs.html

MD5SUMS:

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta2rc/md5sums.html

tags: openoffice.org qa rc release

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build DEV300_m22 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version some language packs have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev
installation.


If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/680/md5sums.html

tags: openoffice.org qa release snapshot

tags: conformance odf opendocument openoffice.org relax-ng validation

While demoing the ODF Wiki to OpenOffice.org and Sun Folks (and by the way, I happily demo it to everybody stumbling into my office :-), I recognized different reactions of people, there were the ones who obviously use Wikis in their daily work and who immediately understood what I wanted to show, namely the possibility of an ODF based Wiki with rich editing capabilities (including graphics, formulas etc.), than there were the ones who seemed to be disappointed, as I just recombined already available stuff, and finally the ones, whose first thought was about how I did implement this. So, this posting is just for the people curious about how it works :-)

For implementing the prototype of an ODF Wiki I used off-the-shelf components only, I have to admit, that I only tried it on Linux and OpenSolaris ... Windows just seemed too far away ;-)

Actually it is fairly simple, the OpenOffice.org suite already has WebDAV support build in, that means that you already can load and store documents from WebDAV enabled servers. For Apache the WebDAV extension can be enabled like this:

  LoadModule dav_module mod_dav.so
  LoadModule dav_fs_module mod_dav_fs.so

  DAVLockDB /var/apache2/DAVLock
  <directory "/var/www">
    Dav On
  <directory>

What was missing yet was a way to make any stored documents available as HTML to web browsers, while ensuring that a browser can forward a document to OOo again for editing purposes. WebDAV was already there, thus I looked how I could interpose delivering HTML pages by the web server, Apache provides for this the "rewrite_module", e.g. with the following rule

  RewriteRule .*\.html$ cgi-bin/convert.sh [PT=application/x-httpd-cgi]

I can ask Apache to always call my "convert.sh" script the moment an HTML page gets requested, OK, the foot was in the door for HTML pages. Next problem was, that the browsers I knew of always downloaded any linked file which they could not render themselves to the "/tmp" directory, to than call any registered helper apps with this copied file. For my ODF documents that meant, that OOo always opened a copy, located in the "/tmp" directory, of any linked ODF file instead of the genuine file on the server. Changing respectively saving such copy does obviously not touch the genuine file at all. The (only) solution which came to my mind was, to use an indirection file which contains the URL of the genuine document. For that I "invented" the new HTTP Content-Type  "text/url". Such an indirection dump look like this:

  Content-Type: text/url
  http://localhost/aspread.ods 

This URL gets then downloaded by the browser, which stores it in a temporary file and than executes a little helper, this helper retrieves the URL from the indirection file and calls OOo with it. What I needed was a rule for Apache to be able to generate the indirection content (the URL of the genuine document) on the fly, while not conflicting with OOo WebDAV access (to retrieve and store .odt, .ods etc.):

  RewriteRule .*\.od.r cgi-bin/redirect-odf.sh [PT=application/x-httpd-cgi]

The "redirect.sh" script gets executed because of an indirector URL, which basically is the URL of a genuine document with a trailing 'r' (for "redirect"), it than removes the trailing 'r' and puts the reduced URL into the reply, while the Content-Type is "text/url" :-)

Only missing piece was now the conversion from ODF to HTML and the addition of the "Edit" button to the resulting HTML documents.

Coincidently Stefan Zimmermann pointed me to the JODConverter, which actually did provide exactly the functionality I needed, I now could create HTML documents from ODF documents on the command line on the fly. A little sed script and some glue code than helped to patch the generated HTML documents to include the "Edit..." button and the indirector link (e.g. "http://localhost/aspread.odsr" - notice the trailing 'r'). I am no artist and happily accepted Lutz Hoegers offer to create the images for the buttons etc., now everything was together, quite hacky but usable to give a demo and to create the screencast ... :-)

I am sorry that I didn't yet give installation instructions but hope explaining how it works is already helpful. My next blog posting, going to be called "ODF@WWW - Simply Install", is already in preparation, please be patient, it is only a matter of days :-)

 To be continued ...

 Regards

           Kay

tags: apache odf opendocument openoffice.org wiki

tags:

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build DEV300_m21 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version some language packs have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev
installation.


If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/680/md5sums.html

tags: openoffice.org qa release snapshot

Downloads on OpenOffice.org

First, let me congratulate the Mozilla community on the very, very high download number of Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours. The download-day was in my eyes a great success for the Mozilla community. Marketing and all background-members of Mozilla.org did a good job and raise the bar for a software-rollout.

Back to OpenOffice.org and its versions. Looking back on our last download numbers we can see them increasing version by version. We grow over 20% from Version 2.3.1 to 2.4.0. Now the 2.4.1 started and it looks good to beat our own record.

Some possible reasons for the strong growth

Well, certainly our OpenOffice.org is a good product, for free and localized in many languages. We have extensions to extend office functionality if needed. In the back-ground runs the update-service to guarantee that the user get the latest updates. Apropos notification, our friends from java.com notified by each java-update that you can get the office productity suite. Big thank you for this hint! - But beside this we also changed some things in the web-area.

The OpenOffice.org website-team, here explicit named Maarten and Ivan did a very good job changing the whole web-design to a new look-and-feel plus a redesign of our pages. This improves the usability enormously.

Another factor is the one-download-click that enables the user to get the download starting with one-click from the homepage or the download main-page. In numbers, before we started with the one-click and the redesign of the pages 10% of visitors started a download of OpenOffice.org after visting the homepage. After the introduction of the one-click and the other web-changes 20%. Hey, this was a big step forward to grow.

Expectations for the future

The OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is on the way and I believe it will break our previous download-numbers. Looking at Firefox and their version number 3, I hope we will also have a big success with our upcoming OpenOffice.org 3. Please help testing and fixing latest issues, get the Beta!

tags: download ooo openoffice.org web

OOo-Dev3.0 Developer Snapshot build DEV300_m20 which installs as OOo-Dev 3.0 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

The rename of the product name to OOo-Dev allows the installation of the OpenOffice.org snapshot parallel to an OpenOffice.org  'final' (released) version. For this version some language packs have been uploaded and they should install into the OOo-Dev
installation.


If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

MD5SUMS:
http://download.openoffice.org/680/md5sums.html

tags: openoffice.org qa release snapshot

Using OOo in my daily work as well as the OOo Wiki, I noticed an obvious disconnect between these two, especially taking into consideration, that we like to promote ODF with OOo.

OOo is used to create and to modify rich documents, which are mostly stored as data files on the local hard disk. Typical scenarios include attaching these documents/files to mails or uploading them somewhere. OOos strength is it's WYSIWYG approach for changing rich documents, which includes spreadsheets, drawings, presentations and certainly texts. Though nowadays this does not seem to be sufficient anymore, "sharing"  as by publication to a few or many individuals needs to be addressed as well. Not supporting this is OOos weakness ...

Wikis, as opposed to rich documents, are more lightweight and allow the direct editing of pages of a particular website by clicking an unspectacular "edit" link. Unfortunately one has to learn a dedicated "programming language", which is not suitable for creating expressive tables or graphics but mostly for simple text only. The document handling is a Wikis strength, but the document editing and simpleness are it's weaknesses ...

Thinking about that, I understood that these two approaches may be married to become an "ODF Wiki", combing their strength - simple editing and simple publishing - while eliminating their weaknesses.

No sooner said than done, I installed an apache webserver, enabled WebDAV, did some (hacky) bash scripting, and got the following:

(YouTubes resolution is not the best, you can download the video as 1280x720 from mediacast. It is showing OpenOffice.org used as a WYSIWYG editor for documents stored on a webserver. Demoing Wiki like capabilities of adding, retrieving, manipulating and publishing documents.)

One may notice, that the "full" experience with an "ODF Wiki" may be achieved by donating a browse-mode to OOo. Nothingness the "ODF Wiki" does certainly support HTML access as well. The demoed scenario is only one of many use cases natively supporting ODF on the server and using OOo as a client. The Wiki approach may be applied to blogging as well, though this is only the tip of the iceberg. Just imagine what you could do, if you make the parts (such as paragraphs, styles etc.) or the content of the stored documents accessible, e.g. from the "gallery" (the thing I copied the image from), you could easily recombine it (either by inserting copies or references) to create other documents.

If you like, or even if you don't like, what you see, please comment. I believe this approach has huge potential and would love to hear your thoughts, impressions etc. and would certainly like to see YOU helping with bringing this forward :-)

Setting up the "ODF Wiki" with the scripts etc. is very simple. I am going to give the details in one of my next blogs :-)

To be continued ...


Regards

      Kay

tags: apache odf opendocument openoffice.org wiki