Adding a printer to OpenOffice

[Frank Cox]

I want to automatically create a .ps file from a html file using a script on
this FC6 machine.

It seems to me that OpenOffice should fit this bill as it can load a html file
and print to a PostScript file.  However, doing this automatically from the
commandline is becoming a challenge.

I thought I might be able to set up a printer using spadmin that would simply
print to a file, then use a command like:

ooffice -pt textfileprinter document.html

Unfortunately, I have run into a roadblock here in that, on my installation of
OpenOffice, when I run /usr/lib/openoffice.org2.0/program/spadmin and select
"new printer" the options "Add a printer" (and "Import printers from a
StarOffice intallation", though this one is not relevant) are greyed out and
the only selections that I can make are "Connect a fax device" or "Connect a
PDF converter".

So how can I add a printer to OpenOffice that will print to a Postscript file?

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 16:11 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
> I want to automatically create a .ps file from a html file using a script on
> this FC6 machine.
>
> It seems to me that OpenOffice should fit this bill as it can load a html file
> and print to a PostScript file.  However, doing this automatically from the
> commandline is becoming a challenge.
>
> I thought I might be able to set up a printer using spadmin that would simply
> print to a file, then use a command like:
>
> ooffice -pt textfileprinter document.html
>
> Unfortunately, I have run into a roadblock here in that, on my installation of
> OpenOffice, when I run /usr/lib/openoffice.org2.0/program/spadmin and select
> "new printer" the options "Add a printer" (and "Import printers from a
> StarOffice intallation", though this one is not relevant) are greyed out and
> the only selections that I can make are "Connect a fax device" or "Connect a
> PDF converter".
>
> So how can I add a printer to OpenOffice that will print to a Postscript file?

I might have the syntax wrong - but I think it can be done in AbiWord
via

abiword --print=foo.ps foo.html

abiword is in extras
You might need a plugin in AbiWord to open html files, I don't know.

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 14:58 -0800, Michael A Peters wrote:
> I might have the syntax wrong - but I think it can be done in AbiWord
> via
>
> abiword --print=foo.ps foo.html
>
> abiword is in extras
> You might need a plugin in AbiWord to open html files, I don't know.

Seems the AbiWord html import plugin is broken at the moment - at least
for my test case :( - otherwise it should work.

It works!

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 15:06 -0800, Michael A Peters wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 14:58 -0800, Michael A Peters wrote:
> > I might have the syntax wrong - but I think it can be done in AbiWord
> > via
> >
> > abiword --print=foo.ps foo.html
> >
> > abiword is in extras
> > You might need a plugin in AbiWord to open html files, I don't know.
>
> Seems the AbiWord html import plugin is broken at the moment - at least
> for my test case :( - otherwise it should work.

It just seems to insist on w3c html.
use HTML Tidy (in package tidy in extras - /usr/bin/tidy) to clean the
html. Then abiword from the cli can print to html.

IE -

tidy foo.html > bar.html
abiword --print=foo.ps bar.html

[Frank Cox]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:58:29 -0800
Michael A Peters  wrote:
> I might have the syntax wrong - but I think it can be done in AbiWord

I installed cups-pdf, thinking that it would get me where I'm going in one step.

However, when I use this commandline:

ooffice -pt Cups-PDF 1.htm

nothing appears to happen. When I load OpenOffice and open 1.htm, then print to
the Cups-PDF printer, I get 1.pdf on my desktop like I expected.

ooffice -pt Cups-PDF test.sxw
does what I expect and gives me test.pdf on my desktop.

[Kevin Cummings]

Frank Cox wrote:
> I want to automatically create a .ps file from a html file using a script on
> this FC6 machine.

html2ps
> It seems to me that OpenOffice should fit this bill as it can load a html file
> and print to a PostScript file.  However, doing this automatically from the
> commandline is becoming a challenge.

Like using a sledge hammer to drive a wire brad.
> I thought I might be able to set up a printer using spadmin that would simply
> print to a file, then use a command like:
>
> ooffice -pt textfileprinter document.html
>
> Unfortunately, I have run into a roadblock here in that, on my installation of
> OpenOffice, when I run /usr/lib/openoffice.org2.0/program/spadmin and select
> "new printer" the options "Add a printer" (and "Import printers from a
> StarOffice intallation", though this one is not relevant) are greyed out and
> the only selections that I can make are "Connect a fax device" or "Connect a
> PDF converter".
>
> So how can I add a printer to OpenOffice that will print to a Postscript file?