FactoryManual/StandardFactory/MSOSun

Factory Manual: MSOSun Backend

The MSOSun backend converts documents using Microsoft Office 2000 or 2003 and the Sun ODF plugin. It talks to Microsoft Office using the COM interface provided by the win32com and pythoncom packages.

This backend is highly experimental. It works on MS-Word but is almost guaranteed not to work on MS-Excel and MS-Powerpoint because the Sun plugin does not install itself as a standard input/output filter in those two applications. Unfortunately the Sun plugin for MS-Office does not work well alongside OpenOffice? 3 so I cannot develop and test it any further at the moment.

Prerequisites

In order to use this backend you need to install a few prerequisites:

  • pythoncom
  • win32com

If you want to provide PDF output as well then you need a few additional prerequisites:

Configuration options

There are no extra configuration options required to provide ODF round-trip conversion. For the PDF output only one configuration setting needs to be added.

printer
The name of the virtual PostScript? printer as it appears in your configuration screen.

Example configuration

Here is an example configuration to provide ODF round-trip and PDF output for MS-Office 2000. 

[global]

backends = word2000, <other backends>

<rest of the global settings skipped>

[word2000]
application = Microsoft Office (Sun plugin)
version = 2000 SP3
doctype = odt
formats = odf,pdf
backend = MSOSun