Open apurvaashok opened 3 years ago
SteelWagstaff
commented
3 years ago Thanks for reporting @apurvaashok -- this is thorough and very useful. No one at Pressbooks has touched the ODT exporter in a couple of years, so that's likely going to be a fairly heavy lift for us. This ODF document reference may be helpful for future work: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/01/21/odf-1-3-approved-as-oasis-committee-specification/
apurvaashok
commented
3 years ago Thanks, Steel! I'm hoping that the reader can still use one of the other Office tools (Open Office, MS Office) to open the document in the meantime. Glad that you've been able to find a bit more documentation about the ODT format online.
On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 12:03 PM Steel Wagstaff notifications@github.com wrote:
Thanks for reporting @apurvaashok https://github.com/apurvaashok -- this is thorough and very useful. No one at Pressbooks has touched the ODT exporter in a couple of years, so that's likely going to be a fairly heavy lift for us. This ODF document reference may be helpful for future work: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/01/21/odf-1-3-approved-as-oasis-committee-specification/
— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pressbooks/ideas/issues/332#issuecomment-685834500, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AG4PO7G2H66MYFJ2Z5X53DLSDZUDXANCNFSM4QS7H3WA .
-- Apurva Ashok Project Lead, Rebus Community Rebus Community https://about.rebus.community/ | @Rebus.Community https://twitter.com/rebusCommunity/
Feature Description
The Ethics book ODT file does not open in Libre Office (which is the main tool used to open, read, edit ODT files). When trying to open the file in Libre Office on Ubuntu or Mac, the following error is displayed: “Read Error. Format error discovered in the file in sub-document content.xml at 1,398652(row,col)” (the row, col number varies from user to user).
I've converted the ODT file to a .zip file using online tools to access the sub-document XML files. The content.xml file displays no issues (in general or at the specific row, col mentioned in the error report) when run through an online XML validator.
The file successfully opens in Open Office, MS Office (Word), and even Notepad (Mac). Some users have reported wonky formatting when opened in these alternative tools, however, that may be expected given that the Pressbooks ODT export feature is still 'in beta.' There are no export errors in Pressbooks when exporting the ODT file.
When running the ODT file through the ODF validator, built by Libre Office, however, a whole host of issues are identified:
Feature Use Case
The ODT file type is one of the editable formats for OERs, and is being used by readers of the book. Libre Office is one of the main tools used to access ODT files. We hope to make the OER available in as many formats as possible to increase its reach and use.
Other Notes
The errors flagged by the ODF validator may have something to do with how the file itself is created, and may require changes to the Pressbooks export process. Since users shouldn’t be expected to troubleshoot and fix errors with the file prior to opening, we're hoping that the team can investigate and revise the export process accordingly.