[Typo3-dev] New Extension: TYPO3 Documents Suite

[Robert Lemke]

Hey folks. 

   I hope you don't mind that I post this on the english as well as the
   developer's list (because I know some people only read either one).
   Please only answer in the english list, as it seems to belong to
   there ...

Okay, now to the point. You probably know the General Office Displayer,
an extension which was capable of displaying Open Office Writer /
Microsoft Word files on a single page in HTML format.

Two months ago I started rewriting such an extension from the scratch.
After having read the Design Patterns book and having feature requests
for either the MS Word part or the OOwriter part, I couldn't stand the
thought having to work with such a old-schoolish code structure.

Even worse: The great idea of being able to *write* office formats was
quite impossible to implement with the old approach, because the file
was parsed directly into HTML while reading it from the original file.

Now, what I did is creating two extensions: 

A code library which provides an internal object model for storing
office documents in general as well as template classes for rendering
engines, parsers and such.

And secondly an extension *using* the code library, just providing a
frontend plugin more or less like you know it from the old extension.

Besides the new features (table of content, configurable page breaks,
support for almost all visual Open Office features) it seems like it's a
blown up General Office Displayer. 

However, there's a big difference under the hood: The whole document is
available internally as an object tree with paragraphs, headers, tables,
meta information and so on. Now imagine what you can do with that:
Import an office docuent into the page tree as pages and content
elements, editing the content elements in the backend and write it back
into some office file format.

It is really easy using the code library in your own extensions! And you
will be able to just create a new rendering class or a new parser,
reading your own file format (like some custom XML file).

I prepared a little project description with a few screenshots. I do
that, because I'm looking for people needing this extension and willing
to sponsor some parts.

I created this extension because I *hope* that it will be useful.
However, I don't have a project needing that extension myself - except
the great guys at dpool, who already have given me some incentive by
sponsoring certain features. 

Okay, said enough. I'm impatiently waiting for your response ... ;-)

Read this (it's on my server until Daniel H. is back from his holidays
and put it on typo3.org):

http://robertlemke.de/de/typo3/typo3_documents_suite/

-- 
robert

"They placed me on this earth without a manual. 
 And I dare to say, I’m doing just fine without ;)"