Templates for OpenOffice / LibreOffice

seafile-server_6.1.0_beta (CE) has a nice feature to create new empty Excel, Powerpoint and Word files.

I would appreciate to have this feature for Calc, Impress and Writer files as well. A configuration item somewhere which will be offered by the “New” button would be great.

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OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with this file format. I don’t think that ist’s possible at the moment.
Though the OnlyOffice Editor is way better than the CO, for now. :slight_smile:

I don’t understand what you mean with “100% compatible”. OpenOffice compared to what?

I agree with you, that OnlyOffice is much more mature than Collabora CODE. Unfortunately OnlyOffice is not able to edit OpenDocument files. So I installed OnlyOffice and Collabora CODE side by side on my seafile server and configured it to open Microsoft files with OnlyOffice and OpenDocument files with Collabora CODE.

Now I am in the situation to be able to create Office Open XML files (Microsoft OOXML) with seafile, but no OpenDocument files. I do not have any Microsoft Office Product, so I use LibreOffice for everything and I’m fairly happy with it. I create Microsoft Office files only if there is a good reason to do so. Because it’s rather unusual for me to create files in Microsoft format I would appreciate the ability to create files in OpenDocument format.

Just what you wrote yourself…


Yes! Totally agree, but format for OpenDocuments is not good either. I use the OnylOffice Desktop editor for Microsoft file types, works totally fine.

You could try to create an empty file using proper suffix using the new file option.

I use the Collabora CODE editor for OpenDocument file types, works sufficient.

What is wrong with that format?

No, that doesn’t work. Collabora CODE will open it as a text file (regardless of the file extension). It sticks to that format and all formatting is gone on program exit. The file stays to be a text file. A workaround could be to upload template files for OpenDocument file types and copy them on demand. But that is a second rate solution, just a workaround.

My approach is to have support for OpenDocument file types in seafile as well. That needs to have the templates for them ready on seafile server, add the entries for the file types in “New” menu the code to transfer the templates on request and of course the translation for the supported languages. All of the parts are already implemented and only need to be extended.

The only new part of my suggestion is a configuration (in seahub_settings.py?) and create the “New” list entries depending on the given file types:
NEW_FILE_TEMPLATES = (‘docx’, ‘pptx’, ‘xlsx’, ‘odt’, ‘odp’, ‘ods’, ‘odg’)
I don’t know if Collabora CODE supports odg.

Sometimes the formatation in the documents itself is messy, but maybe I just haven’t used it enough yet.

I would like to voice my interest in this feature. Since Seafile already supports Collabora (which is based on LibreOffice), it would be useful and natural to support creating empty OpenDocument files as well.

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One more voice for some support to create odt, ods or odp files. I find a little strange to have docx or xlsx files when only Collabora is installed.

A configuration variable as suggested by Wolle could be interesting, but as Seafile knows exactly which Office support is installed (seahub configuration), it should be able to generate itself the corresponding menu for “New”.

Is this support, in any direction, something scheduled ?

OnlyOffice supports x format document types.

It should be configurable by the admin which templates are available for new docs.
This option it’s currently missing.

@daniel.pan
It may also make sense to split the Seahub settings into multiple config files since it has become quiet extensive.

Then the office suite and other settings can be extended without confusion on what to configure, containing all possible settings already - commented out of course.

We’d like to keep the software simple to maintain by only providing most used options. Otherwise 3 solutions (OnlyOffice, CollabOnline, MS Office Online Sever) multiplied by many file types and incompatibility with the 3 solutions will cause us a nightmare to maintain.

Actually we are complained by providing too many config files (seahub_settings.py, ccnet.conf, seafile.conf, seafevents.conf). So we will no longer add more config files.

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