read .odt openoffice files

[pini]

Dear all,

when orienting myself on what e-reader to by, I'm pretty sure I read that the Pocketbook can also read .doc (MS word) and .odt files. I am able to read word-files, but my .odt files aren't even seen or recognised anywhere in the library or file-browser.
I just supposed .odt would be OpenOffice writer files and would like (but it it's not that much of an issue for now) to be able to read them.

Any suggestions?

cheers,
pini

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pini

Dear all,

when orienting myself on what e-reader to by, I'm pretty sure I read that the Pocketbook can also read .doc (MS word) and .odt files. I am able to read word-files, but my .odt files aren't even seen or recognised anywhere in the library or file-browser.
I just supposed .odt would be OpenOffice writer files and would like (but it it's not that much of an issue for now) to be able to read them.

Any suggestions?

cheers,
pini

PocketBook can read .doc files.
I am not so sure about .odt. I do not recall seeing such info.

.odt file is very similar in structure to epub, so you might try to rename .odt to .odt.epub and if you are lucky, in some cases this might work.

.odt file can be used as an input to Calibre, so there is no problem converting. Also there are some plugins for OpenOffice (or its newer step-brother Libre Office) for epub creation. I think that some epub authoring programs (sigil? or perhaps commercial (and very good) Jutoh? might accept .odt)

[pini]

Originally Posted by kacir

PocketBook can read .doc files.
I am not so sure about .odt. I do not recall seeing such info.

.odt file is very similar in structure to epub, so you might try to rename .odt to .odt.epub and if you are lucky, in some cases this might work.

.odt file can be used as an input to Calibre, so there is no problem converting. Also there are some plugins for OpenOffice (or its newer step-brother Libre Office) for epub creation. I think that some epub authoring programs (sigil? or perhaps commercial (and very good) Jutoh? might accept .odt)

Hi kacir,

that works pretty well actually! Very readible once you make sure the page width fits. text is not re-aligned or anything and pictures are not shown, but the text is still there and captions and simple text-formatting are shown!

However, I need to rename the files to .odt.epub manually, which is not is not such a big deal but doesn't work when saving something from the net.

Would some SCRIPTMAGIC be possible to 'tell' the pocketbook to 'recognise' this file-extension, because plain .odt files aren't even shown in the file browser or library at all!

Who can help me?

cheers,
pini

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pini

Would some SCRIPTMAGIC be possible to 'tell' the pocketbook to 'recognise' this file-extension, because plain .odt files aren't even shown in the file browser or library at all!

You need to change extensions.cfg file

You have three possibilities:

- look what program is used to open epub and make another line in configuration file and try to persuade program to open your odt file. Once you see extensions.cfg config file the syntax should be obvious.

- you night try to install Linux terminal emulator on your PocketBook and rename file manually

- you might try to install Linux terminal emulator on your PocketBook and make script rename.sh. The script would take file that is given to it as an input parameter and make a copy with *.epub mask. Then you can use extensions.cfg to assign your shell script as program that "opens" that .odf file. Of course, the program won't open the file, but it will make *.odt.epub that can be opened by other programs. There is busybox installed on PocketBook. Look it up. It means that there are quite a few Unix utilities available.


Please notice that there are quite a few programs that can open epub files and some of those might be better at opening your "fake" epub
- built-in FBReader
- third-party FBReader - FBReader180
- built-in epubreader (or is it adobereader? see extensions.cfg)
- third-party coolreader.

If there is more than one program assigned to one extensions (such as epub) you press AND HOLD OK button and select "open with" from menu.

[pini]

Originally Posted by kacir

You need to change extensions.cfg file
- look what program is used to open epub and make another line in configuration file and try to persuade program to open your odt file. Once you see extensions.cfg config file the syntax should be obvious.
- you might try to install Linux terminal emulator on your PocketBook and make script rename.sh. The script would take file that is given to it ...
-Please notice that there are quite a few programs that can open epub files and some of - third-party coolreader.

Hi kacir,
thanx again for all the input.
Yesterday evening I got the rsh.app access working, so I'm up for the next challenge...

These sound as reasonable and doable edits. Good to know however about the extensions.cfg file! That sounds like the way to go, because I don't want to change, edit or rename every file manually. (and even a 'rename.app' would have to be called manually! And this approach breaks of course when I want another default reader for regular .epubs than for .odt. (fbreader and fbreader180 complain about a broken file in case of .odt.epub. standard reader (=adobe?) works fine. I need to try coolreader, I wasn't aware of this one).
That make option 1 definitely my first choice.

Work for tonight ;-) hmmm, I need to start reading on my PocketBook as well!

cheers,
pini

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pini

(and even a 'rename.app' would have to be called manually!

Why?
Once you download extensions.cfg, you can add 'rename.app' as an app to "open" the .odt. "Opening" the .odt will just quietly make an .odt.epub copy of the file. You find yourself in the library again and this time you open the .epub file in desired application.

----- WARNING! Untested code ahead! -----
###rename.app might look like this:
#!/bin/sh
Infile="$1"
Outfile="$1.epub"
cp "$Infile" "$Outfile"
----- end of untested code -----

[AnneT]

Thanks a lot, both for questions and answers...
I had already been wondering if there was an ereader that could read odt. (And I was already considering Pocketbook as my next purchase because it seemed the answer to other requirements I have.)

[kacir]

Originally Posted by AnneT

I had already been wondering if there was an ereader that could read odt.

There is no such reader as far as I know, besides a notebook or a tablet.
What you see here is an UGLY HACK that might or might not work for particular .odt file.
odt files and epub files are both .zip archives, and have similar structure. The similarity ends there.
Take an odf file, rename it to .odf.zip and have as look inside. Do the same with epub.
You can not simply unzip an epub and then zip it again. There is one file (I think it is manifest) that has to go in with zero compression and has to be at the beginning of the archive. If you need to unzip, edit and then put back together an epub file you can use Calibre context menu.

[pini]

Originally Posted by kacir

There is no such reader as far as I know, besides a notebook or a tablet.
What you see here is an UGLY HACK that might or might not work for particular .odt file.
odt files and epub files are both .zip archives, and have similar structure. The similarity ends there.
Take an odf file, rename it to .odf.zip and have as look inside. Do the same with epub.
You can not simply unzip an epub and then zip it again. There is one file (I think it is manifest) that has to go in with zero compression and has to be at the beginning of the archive. If you need to unzip, edit and then put back together an epub file you can use Calibre context menu.

opening .odt (openoffice writer) files
works perfectly with: adobeviewer (formats bold, italic, headers (OK, but NO auto-wrap, sometimes...), auto-wrapping, bullets); fine to read.
of course: no pics, no tables, table of contents, references (links), etc...

NOTHING WORKS WITH: fbreader, fbreader180, coolreader

1)
file extensions out of the box...
.odt.epub OK
renamed .epub OK

using script renameODT.app renames (copies) all .odt files to .odt.epub
as suggested by kacir and script alike unzip script by review

2)
changing entension.cfg...
several options tested...
odt:@ODT_file:1:AdobeViewer.app:ICON_EPUB
odt:@EPUB_file:1:AdobeViewer.app:ICON_EPUB
.odt is 'recognised', but can't open...
files recognised as EPUB files, but can't be opened (reported as 'broken')

3)
MY solution:
adapt 'extensions.cfg' like this:
odt:@EPUB_file:1:renameODT.app:ICON_EPUB
odt.epub:@EPUB_file:1:AdobeViewer.app:ICON_EPUB
epub:@EPUB_file:1:cr3-pb.app,AdobeViewer.app,fbreader180.app,fbreader.ap p:ICON_EPUB

AND:
Put renameODT.app in "search path" like /system/bin; applications dir doesn't work, tried several ways like absolute path and putting path to renameODT.app in quotes, but to no avail!

EXTRA FUN:
I prefer CoolReader for reading epubs (for now, I think, just testing...)
.odt.epub ONLY works with AdobeViewer and having the double extension actually works,
so now in each case the only correct / preferred reader is opened

first time opening an .odt file starts rename app (thanx kacir for this tip!) and renames all files. Next time (apparently) opening the same book opens the actual .odt.epub for reading

In general conclusion, it depends of course on what you expect from .odt reading. If you want ALL, then just reformat your files on your computer BEFORE copying to the pocketbook, but else, for me, this quite a usable solution (tried with some 10 documents, simple and more complex and up to some 20 pages)

of course, nobody is ever gonna use this... ;-P

pini

[gshank]

There's an extension for Open Office to convert files to epub format, writer2epub. It might be easier to convert your files before copying them to the reader.

[pini]

Hi gshank,

thanks for that suggestion, I wasn't aware of it.
Of course, for ALL OO applications, it's plain easy to export pdf's or even MS .doc (ykes).

My 'solution' enables me to grab at the last second a folder of files for proofreading, OR
to find a document on-line over wifi and still be able to read odt without any further (conversion) steps.

greets,
pini

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pini

of course, nobody is ever gonna use this... ;-P

There might be very few people that are going to read .odt files this way, but I am pretty sure you have discovered a thing or two that someone can find very useful. Just like things that I suggested.