Using OpenOffice as a DocBook editor

Hi all,

I’m experimenting with using DocBook here for our documentation needs. I’d really like to be able to get things written by development and support engineers into DocBook form as smoothly as possible, and to that end have been thinking about using OpenOffice and its DocBook template and filters. Boy, I am really having trouble with getting it to work in any way, shape, or form.

First I tried the OpenOffice that shipped with SuSE Pro 9 (version 2.0). The filters and template were already there. Whenever I tried to open a DocBook document, or create a new one from scratch, it hung the machine.

Next I tried RHEL 4 with OpenOffice 1.1.2. I followed the directions on how to set up the filters and template. Now, whenever I try to open a DocBook document, or create a new one from scratch, I get an error message at least: something like “Error loading document file filename: General Error. General input/output error.” It opens as a text file, so suspect the problem is with the XSLT files.

Has anyone gone through this process and achieved any success? Any tips, pointers, etc?

Thanks in advance…

Alan C. Oehler

Sr. Technical Writer

XenSource, Inc.

Phone: 650.798.5900 x 240

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