Format Writer Documents with Any Markup
Productivity Sauce
Although I use OpenOffice.org Writer for all of my writings, most publishers I write for require plain text files with a dash of markup formatting. This means that pretty much none of my articles are delivered as .odt files. So before I can send the article, I have to format it using one of many markup dialects. For example, all my blog posts must be formatted using markup supported by eZ Publish software, while articles for Linux Pro Magazine must be formatted using a special in-house markup.
Doing formatting manually is both tedious and time-consuming, so I wrote an OpenOffice.org macro that does the donkey job for me. The way the macro works is pretty simple: it searches for formatted text fragments in the current Writer document and wraps all occurrences into the appropriate tags. For example, when the macro finds a text fragment in bold, it adds the <B> and </B> tags to the fragment, so this is bold becomes <B>this is bold</B>. Besides text formatting, the macro also supports paragraph styles, so it adds the appropriate header tags to paragraphs formatted as Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. In addition to that, the macro can also handle hyperlinks.
Sub HTMLMarkup MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 1", "<H1>", "</H1>") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 2", "<H2>", "</H2>") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 3", "<H3>", "</H3>") MarkupTextFunc("CharWeight", com.sun.star.awt.FontWeight.BOLD, "<B>&</B>") MarkupTextFunc("CharPosture", com.sun.star.awt.FontSlant.ITALIC, "<I>&</I>") MarkupURLFunc End Sub Function MarkupHeadingsFunc (StyleName, StartTag, EndTag) ThisDoc=ThisComponent ThisText=ThisDoc.Text ParaEnum=ThisText.createEnumeration While ParaEnum.hasmoreElements Para=ParaEnum.nextElement PortionEnum=Para.createEnumeration While PortionEnum.hasMoreElements Portion=PortionEnum.nextElement If Portion.paraStyleName = StyleName then Portion.String = StartTag + Portion.String + EndTag End if Wend Wend End Function Function MarkupTextFunc(SearchAttrName, SearchAttrValue, ReplaceStr) Dim SearchAttributes(0) As New com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue ThisDoc=ThisComponent SearchAttributes(0).Name=SearchAttrName SearchAttributes(0).Value=SearchAttrValue ReplaceObj=ThisDoc.createReplaceDescriptor ReplaceObj.SearchRegularExpression=true ReplaceObj.searchStyles=false ReplaceObj.searchAll=true ReplaceObj.SetSearchAttributes(SearchAttributes) ReplaceObj.SearchString=".*" ReplaceObj.ReplaceString=ReplaceStr ThisDoc.replaceAll(ReplaceObj) End Function Sub MarkupURLFunc ThisDoc=ThisComponent ThisText=ThisDoc.Text ParaEnum=ThisText.createEnumeration While ParaEnum.hasmoreElements Para=ParaEnum.nextElement PortionEnum=Para.createEnumeration While PortionEnum.hasMoreElements Portion=PortionEnum.nextElement If Portion.HyperlinkURL <> "" then Portion.String = "<A HREF=""" + Portion.HyperlinkURL +""">" +Portion.String + "</A>" End if Wend Wend End Sub
The macro formats the active Writer document using the HTML markup, but you can easily adapt it for other markups. For example, if you want the macro to format the text using the DokuWiki markup, replace parameters in the MarkupHeadingsFunc and MarkupTextFunc functions with DokuWiki tags:
MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 1", "====== ", " ======") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 2", "===== ", " =====") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 3", "==== ", " ====") MarkupTextFunc("CharWeight", com.sun.star.awt.FontWeight.BOLD, "**&**") MarkupTextFunc("CharPosture", com.sun.star.awt.FontSlant.ITALIC, "//&//")
Also, you can easily extend the macro to add support for other text and paragraph styles. The following two statements format the underlined and strikeout text fragments using the appropriate DokuWiki tags:
MarkupTextFunc("CharUnderline", com.sun.star.awt.FontUnderline.SINGLE, "__&__") MarkupTextFunc("CharStrikeout", com.sun.star.awt.FontStrikeout.SINGLE, "<del>&</del>")
The described macro saves me a lot of time and work, and if you find yourself in a similar situation where you need to apply specific formatting to your Writer documents, this simple tool can help you, too.
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