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Automatic PDF previews for Office documents (censhare Client)


An installation of OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be used to create PDF from various Office formats. From this PDF, the preview is rendered. Native OpenOffice document formats are integrated.

Supported formats

The following formats are supported:

MIME-Typ

Suffix

Processor

MS-Word document OOXML

docx

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice

MS-Word document with macros, OOXML

docm

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice

MS Word template with macros, OOXML

dotm

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice

MS Word template OOXML

dotx

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice

MS Excel document OOXML

xlsx

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice

MS PowerPoint document OOXML

pptx

Thumbnail extraction, optional OpenOffice




MS Word document

doc, dot

OpenOffice

MS Excel document

xls

OpenOffice

MS PowerPoint document

ppt

OpenOffice




OpenDocument text

odt

OpenOffice

OpenDocument template

ott

OpenOffice

OpenDocument spreadsheet

ods

OpenOffice

OpenDocument spreadsheet template

ots

OpenOffice

OpenDocument presentation

odp

OpenOffice

OpenDocument presentation template

otp

OpenOffice

OpenDocument drawing

odg

OpenOffice

OpenDocument drawing template

otg

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 Text

sxw

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 text template

stw

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 spreadsheet

sxc

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 spreadsheet template

stc

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 presentation

sxi

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 presentation template

sti

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 drawing

sxd

OpenOffice

OpenOffice.org 1.0 drawing template

std

OpenOffice




RTF file

rtf

OpenOffice

"Open Office" as a processor in this context always means that either OpenOffice or LibreOffice create the PDF.

The process responsible for generating new previews detects whether an OpenOffice / LibreOffice configuration has been activated in the image service. When OpenOffice integration is disabled, assets are ignored with a warning in the server log file.

When OpenOffice is used, the temporarily generated PDF files are preserved under the asset. In the settings there are file types available whose key starts with "pdf".

At present it is not yet possible to specify PDF settings programmatically, such as downsampling of images, font embedding, PDF/X-3, etc. In test operations it has been proven that the values ​​of OpenOffice PDF exports had an impact on the later PDF export operation with the server.

The quality of the preview is only as good as how OpenOffice / LibreOffice can handle foreign formats. This has to be tested for each individual case. An obvious example are marginal notes in Word (. Doc) which are not rendered correctly. Because the preview is obtained from the PDF, the configuration of GhostScript as an image service will also be required.

Configuration

Configuration is performed in two places. Once under Modules · Previews · Preview Preferences and also under Services · Image. The default TCP port for communication with OpenOffice / LibreOffice is 9980, but may be changed if required.

If the rendering of Office previews by the censhare Service-Client does not work right away, it helped to upgrade to the latest available version of the free Office. On the Mac you may need to launch a freshly installed Office suite at least once manually, otherwise e.g. LibreOffice will remain unresponsive after the first launch using the script. Then you can continue to use the shell script as recommended to start LibreOffice. For complex documents, OpenOffice sometimes renders white pages, while for the same document LibreOffice calculates an incomplete or incorrect preview. You might want to run in headless mode to hide the Office application while rendering.

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