[plug] Need help getting into publisher files.

[Craig Ringer]

Leon Brooks wrote:

>On Monday 04 July 2005 12:52, simon wrote:
>  
>
>>Has anyone mentioned OOo Impress yet?
>>    
>>
Draw or Writer would be better choices I suspect. Neither are a good fit.

>>Does it have MS Publisher import capability?
>>    
>>
>
>No.
>
>Well, you can cut and paste between them on MS-'doze, of course. But 
>basically, no. Also, you would be better of using OOWriter. Define a 
>few frames and it does everything except automatically create new pages 
>(and you may be able to do that with a template and/or style, I haven't 
>tried) and do WordArt (and I understand that OOo 2.0 has a similar 
>tool).
>  
>
Yep.

Be aware that OO.o writer may leave you sobbing in frustration if you 
try to do page layout style tasks with it. You'll be able to do it, but 
it's painful and there's a good chance it'll just explode if you open it 
on a different system. Maybe they've done some drastic changes for 2.x 
that make that less the case - I should check, since I have it lying around.

Of course, most/all of the free alternatives have a good chance of 
leaving you sobbing in frustration for one reason or another :S

To the best of my knowledge there is no good answer to this question 
except "keep using Publisher" or "bite the bullet and re-do the files 
from exported images and text". As someone who wants *VERY* badly to be 
able to deal with MS Publisher files (we get them at work from people 
who can't read our accepted formats list, then turn out not to have 
Acrobat ...), I've never found a way to do so. Including buying 
Publisher, actually, since like most DTP formats a doc is useless 
without the fonts it was made with (and in the case of publisher may 
break if set up for a *different* *printer*). The best I normally manage 
is to get them to export to PDF, or failing that save as PostScript with 
embedded fonts and I ps2pdf/distill it at work. That's no good if you 
want to retain editability - so you're back at square 1.

--
Craig Ringer