I am involved in a national project which is heavily dependant for the reporting on a style guide used in Microsoft Word, it is Murphy’s Law that said style guide encounters problems with different versions of Word. In order to try and bypass these problems I suggested that we look at the possibility of adapting the style guide for use in Libre Office.
The immediate problem one encounters is that macros in Word are written in Visual Basic whereas Libre Office uses LibreOffice Basic and has very restricted ability to run visual basic.
In an ideal world some clever person would have written a program to convert visual basic to LibreOffice basic!
As it is over 30 years since I last wrote programs, in BBC Basic for the ‘BBC Computers’ ,and things have changed a lot since then, I was looking for a book which might help me translate visual basic into LibreOffice basic.
So far the only book I have found is a guide to OpenOffice Basic. As Libre Office has developed out of Open Office I wondered if the basic would be the same?
I know that there are guides available on line but I find them difficult to use due to the lack of the detailed examples which you often find in a book!
I have a text copy of the details which come up when you try to edit the original Word macro and while I can grasp what the details do I have so far been unable work out how it does it!
Any assistance or advice gratefully received.
merkland wrote:
>
> I am involved in a national project which is heavily dependant for the
> reporting on a style guide used in Microsoft Word, it is Murphy’s Law
> that said style guide encounters problems with different versions of
> Word. In order to try and bypass these problems I suggested that we look
> at the possibility of adapting the style guide for use in Libre Office.
> The immediate problem one encounters is that macros in Word are written
> in Visual Basic whereas Libre Office uses LibreOffice Basic and has very
> restricted ability to run visual basic.
> In an ideal world some clever person would have written a program to
> convert visual basic to LibreOffice basic!
> As it is over 30 years since I last wrote programs, in BBC Basic for the
> ‘BBC Computers’ ,and things have changed a lot since then, I was looking
> for a book which might help me translate visual basic into LibreOffice
> basic.
> So far the only book I have found is a guide to OpenOffice Basic. As
> Libre Office has developed out of Open Office I wondered if the basic
> would be the same?
> I know that there are guides available on line but I find them difficult
> to use due to the lack of the detailed examples which you often find in
> a book!
> I have a text copy of the details which come up when you try to edit the
> original Word macro and while I can grasp what the details do I have so
> far been unable work out how it does it!
> Any assistance or advice gratefully received.
>
> merkland
>
>
LibreOffice 3 Basic Guide http://www.scribd.com/doc/99684510/8/Working-With-Variables
LibreOffice Basic Help https://help.libreoffice.org/Basic/Basic_Help
VB Code has no effect in OpenOffice/LibreOffice but you can load and save documents without affecting the code - see Tools>Options>Load/Save>VBA Properties
IMO you’re just throwing good effort over bad when you’re talking about trying to standardize on Word “styling.” Although not unique to Microsoft, it’s one of the major differentiators that separates MS products from others. MS needs to continually evolve styling and styles particularly in how styles are rendered to motivate people to pay for MS products.
So, I instead recommend that you consider converting everything to HTML. Default Word on Windows has variable support (older none) for HTML, but all Office Word since… 2005? supports HTML formats and should be universally supported in most major Office alternatives like Libre/Open Office.
Plus, if you have anyone truly geeky in your organization it will enable anyone to modify using standard CSS and HTML tool.
I am not sure that we are both on the same ‘wavelength’ possibly because I have not explained things very well so I will attempt to do better.
The project is being conducted by a volunteer organisation and involves recording all aspects of the interiors of certain historic buildings. The records have to be made to a strict format and in the same order for every building examined. As the work is being carried out by volunteers, who are mainly retired and elderly with limited computer skills, the “Style Guide” was produced to provide an easy way of recording the information obtained in a consistent way by everyone involved.
The “Style Guide” was produced some years ago in what was the prevalent word processor package Microsoft Word. Problems have arisen because each time someone gets a new computer it can have a different version of Word and no two versions of Word handle templates/macros in exactly the same way. This means that we elderly volunteers are experiencing grief and hassle in trying to carry out what should be a useful and enjoyable pastime.
My hope was to be able to adapt the “Style Guide” so it would work in Open Office/Libre Office which seem to provide more stable and consistent ways of working from version to version.
Existing records which have been completed in Word can be opened in Libre Office, and display correctly, but records cannot be extended because the individual macros do not work.
I was interested in your suggestion to convert everything to HTML and would like to know more about how it is done and if it would still provide the same functionality.
It sounds as if, in the long term, you may have to convert the macros to LibreOffice macros; you would obviously have to convert your volunteers into LibreOffice users but if you could do that and give them a LibreOffice template on which to work in future, you could then go back and convert the earlier documents over time.
An alternative would be to change the format completely. It sounds as if the data would be better in a database. If so, it might be possible to set up a number of tables for text input in a Word/LibreOffice document and then convert the data to CSV.
On 2013-10-24 22:46, john hudson wrote:
>
> It sounds as if, in the long term, you may have to convert the macros to
> LibreOffice macros; you would obviously have to convert your volunteers
> into LibreOffice users but if you could do that and give them a
> LibreOffice template on which to work in future, you could then go back
> and convert the earlier documents over time.
Rather, and more feasible, is let each volunteer choose his program, as
they are doing now (different versions of Word). And provide a “style
guide” in Libre Office format so that they can also choose Libre office.
That’s what the OP proposed.
I think that the problem then is engaging a volunteer to translate the
macros.
>
> An alternative would be to change the format completely. It sounds as if
> the data would be better in a database. If so, it might be possible to
> set up a number of tables for text input in a Word/LibreOffice document
> and then convert the data to CSV.
But you can not do that to volunteers using their own computers, each
one with different Windows version and little computer skills. The hope
is to allow those that wish to also use Linux for the same task.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))