[ANN] OOoExtract v0.1

[Daniel Carrera]

Greetings,

I'd like to announce the immediate availability of "OOoExtract" :

http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/openoffice/tools/ooo_extract.html

This is a command-line program, inspired by 'grep', to extract data from
OpenOffice.org files according to certain regular expressions.

This program is really cool and I'm very happy with it. It can make use of OOo's XML
structure to make more intelligent and complex matches than a simple 'grep' could.

OpenOffice.org has a concept of "styles". It has some pre-defined styles, and you
can define your own. For example, if you have a list of poems, you can define a
"Poem" style and a "PoemAuthor" style. You an then assign to them a particular
appearance. This allows you to give your document a logical structure.

OOoExtract can make use of this information to match not only text content, but also
styles. For example:

$ ruby ooo_extract.rb --style="PoemAuthor" poems.sxw
Robert Frost
Ernest Hemingway
Robert Frost


OOoExtract can also apply boolean operators to the search.

$ ruby ooo_extract.rb --style="PoemAuthor" --text="R" file.sxw
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
$
$ ruby ooo_extract.rb --style="PoemAuthor" --or --text="R" file.sxw
Robert Frost
Ernest Hemingway
Robert Frost
Richard M. Stallman
$
$ ruby ooo_extract.rb --style="PoemAuthor" --xor --text="R" file.sxw
Ernest Hemingway
Richard M. Stallman
$
$ ruby ooo_extract.rb --style="PoemAuthor" --xor --text="R" \
--ignore-case file.sxw
Richard M. Stallman
$


This program should be considered beta. OpenOffice.org files are very complex and I
have only tested it in very simple scenarios. I have not tested it on files with
tables, or lists. I have not tested it on anything but word processor documents
(Writer).

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

 

[Harry Ohlsen]

Hi Daniel,

I'd like to announce the immediate availability of "OOoExtract" :

http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/openoffice/tools/ooo_extract.html

What's all that embedded "binary" at the end of the script?

Harry O.

 

[Daniel Carrera]

What's all that embedded "binary" at the end of the script?

It's a tar archive. The script is a self-extracting archive. I made it with
Erik's Tar2RubyScript:

http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/tar2rubyscript/

This program takes a directory with a ruby program and any number of files and packs
them all together into one single script. The idea being, that this makes it easier
to distribute, because it is only one single, self-contained file.

If you download the tar.gz file under the "Download Source" link, you extract it, and
run tar2rubyscript.rb on it, you will get the "binary" file under the "Download
Program" link.

Cheers,

 

[Harry Ohlsen]

It's a tar archive. The script is a self-extracting archive. I made it with
Erik's Tar2RubyScript:

http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/tar2rubyscript/

This program takes a directory with a ruby program and any number of files and packs
them all together into one single script. The idea being, that this makes it easier
to distribute, because it is only one single, self-contained file.

Brilliant!

Cheers,

H.