OpenOffice

From Open Clip Art Library Wiki

OpenOffice.org is a SUN-sponsored Open Source Office Productivity suite.

Usage of Open Clip Art Images

OpenOffice.org (up to version 2.3) does not natively support SVG files, however there are two broad approaches to getting the OCAL images into OpenOffice. The first approach is using vector formats, which are inherently higher quality and scale very well. The second, or fall back, approach is to use bitmap/raster formats, which do not scale well.

Using Vector Formats

While OpenOffice doesn't natively support SVG images, a third-party plugin available from http://haumacher.de/svg-import/ can add this support. This plugin internally converts SVG files into OpenDocument Graphics using the Apache Batik SVG Engine. It's in an early stage but produces reasonable results for simple SVG graphics. There are instructions for installing the plugin on that website. Using this plugin, you must select File -> Open to open the SVG file, rather than Insert -> Picture -> From File. as SVG files are effectively treated like OpenDocument Graphics (ODG) files, and opened in OpenOffice Draw. Thus, to use the graphic in Writer or Impress, you will need to copy and paste the graphic from OpenOffice Draw.

The same people who made the above plugin have also produced a batch processing utility called svg2office to convert SVG files to ODG files in bulk.

Inkscape will also convert SVG files into OpenDocument Graphics (ODG) documents, which is the native format for OpenOffice Draw and several recent office and graphics programs. Again this is at an early stage, but the results are reasonable. Inkscape can also export SVG files to various other vector formats that OpenOffice can import, inluding EMF and WMF (Windows only and inferior to EMF).

Note: All of these vector conversions tend to lose some detail, primarily colour and transparency gradients/blends, plus also SVG effects, such as the blur effect that became popular in Inkscape 0.45. These problems will probably be resolved in the near future. See the OpenOffice Wiki for some user experiences of conversion.

Using Bitmap/Raster Formats

Many of the pictures in the Open Clip Art Library now include a PNG version, which can be directly imported into OpenOffice. Once you have the file on your computer, simply go to Insert-->Picture-->From File, and open the file from your hard drive.

Additionally, images can be converted to bitmap/raster formats using Inkscape or the GIMP, among others. Inkscape will export to PNG, but the GIMP will export to many formats, including PNG, GIF, JPG, BMP. Both these programs are free and work on all major operating systems.

Note: Bitmap/Raster images will produce faithfully at the designated size, however as with any bitmap image they do not scale well, and produce jagged or pixelated images.

For More Information

For more discussion of OpenOffice.org and SVG importing, see Issue 2497 and Issue 49991 in the OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker.

Screenshots

See Also

•  !Broken Link! OpenOffice.org Integration [1]

External Links

• Official Site