Re: [libreoffice-users] Removing Index Markers from Writer: a How-To

I've asked a question on this list about soffice, and this topic is the 
reason I was asking.

Let's say we can use the command line to 1) convert an .odt to an .fodt 
file, and 2) to convert it back again.

If so, I can write a script that uses soffice to do
1) as above
perl -e .... # perform the text substitutions
2) as above to re-establish the modified .odt file.

Peter West
"Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it..."

On 29/01/2014 1:45 am, CVAlkan wrote:
> In previous posts, I described how Writer adds extra index markers
> when updating an Alphabetical Index. One side effect of this behavior
> is that, even if an item is later removed from the concordance file,
> the marker remains in the text, and therefore in the index.
>
> So, here's how to remove all of the index markers from a Writer
> document so you can start with a clean slate. To do this, you will
> need to be running LibreOffice on some flavor of Linux/Unix, or at
> least on a system that has a command line or some text editor with
> "sed" or "grep" capabilities.
>
> 1: Make a backup of your Writer document. You know the consequences
> if something goes amiss. 2: Open the document in Writer, and choose
> Save As "OpenDocument Text (Flat XML) (fodt)" This creates an
> uncompressed XML version of the document. On my system (Ubuntu), I
> was unable to decompress the odt version, as the OS complained it was
> malformed, but using the native capability is always a better idea.
> 3: Close the document and exit Writer. 4: Open a command line shell,
> preferably in the directory containing the fodt file. 5: Run the
> following command (all one line - broken apart here for clarity): sed
> 's/<text:alphabetical-index-mark
> text:string-value="\([A-Za-z]*\)"\/>//g' <
> Old_File_Name_and_Path.fodt
> > New_File_Name_and_Path.fodt
> Depending on the file size and processor speed, this may take a bit.
> If this gives errors, you're on your own. 6: Close the command line
> shell. 7: Open the new "cleansed" fodt file with Writer. 8: The file
> should look the same but without any alphabetical index markers.
> (Your index formatting is still there, though) 9: Go to where your
> alphabetical index is located, right click on it and select "Update
> Index/Table" A: All of the index entries should disappear; if any
> remain, go find them on the referenced pages and manually delete
> them. Apparently, some of the indexes are embedded in others and
> aren't found by the sed command above. I didn't bother to try
> figuring out how or why that happened. I had several hundred markers,
> of which only five weren't removed. B: Now, go back to the index and
> select Edit Index/Table, then File | Open. C: Select the original
> concordance file (assuming you have it set up how you want it), and
> let Writer go do its thing. D: You now have a "clean" document with
> no duplicate index entries. E: LOOK AT IT CAREFULLY, of course,
> before replacing your original. The document I tried this on was over
> four hundred pages with lots of tables, graphics and so forth, and I
> found no problems, but it's up to you to determine if everything is
> ok.
>
> I hope this helps any others who might be using alphabetic indexes.
>
>
>
>
> -- View this message in context:
> http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Removing-Index-Markers-from-Writer-a-How-To-tp4094327.html
Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

--
Peter West
"Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it..."

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