saibotsivad/odt-templater

From markdown to ODT (and then probably PDF), with configurable styles.

ODT Templater

Markdown to physical paper.

Write your documents in markdown, output them as templateable ODT files.

(Typical flow: Markdown -> ODT -> PDF)

Overview

Suppose you write a long book type thing, but then you want to print it. Web typography is much different than paper typography, and publishers/printers usually want PDF files, so you'll need to generate an output file based on the markdown you wrote.

This module generates an ODT file from markdown. ODT files have the normal typography styles that are used to make great prints.

You can generate an ODT style template using some other application like LibreOffice. Inside LibreOffice you would set template styles like header styles, page margins, etc. That file would be used as a reference file for your generated file.

ODT Files

ODT files are actually just compressed ZIP files, filled with a handful of XML files. Here's a typical file structure inside an ODT file:

• META-INF/manifest.xml : Contains a list of all the files packaged into the ODT file. This file is required for most ODT file readers.
• Thumbnails/thumbnail.png : Optional picture file, used by some operating systems as a preview of the document.
• settings.xml : Overall document settings and styles, such as page margins, justification rules, bullet numbering schemes, etc. This file is required for most ODT file reader applications.
• styles.xml : Particular style settings, such as header styles, list and paragraph indentation styles, etc. This file is required for most ODT file reader applications.
• content.xml : Contains the actual document content. This file is required for most ODT file reader applications

Utilities

This module has several utilities:

package-odt.js

Given a folder containing an unpackaged ODT file, this will repackage the folder content into a valid ODT file.

Example:

var package = require('odt-templater/package-odt.js')
package({
	outputFile: 'output.odt',
	inputFolder: 'resources/minimal-odt'
}, function() {
	console.log('done packaging')
})

template-odt.js

Given a folder containing an unpackaged ODT file, the content.xml file will be treated as a mustache template.

The folder contents will be repackaged into a valid ODT file, using the rendered content.xml. (The original content.xml file is left unchanged.)

Example:

var templater = require('odt-templater/template-odt.js')
templater({
	outputFile: 'output.odt',
	inputFolder: 'resources/minimal-odt',
	data: {
		user: {
			firstName: 'John'
		}
	}
}, function() {
	console.log('done templating')
})

unpackage-odt.js

Given an ODT file, it will be unpacked into the given folder, attempting to create that folder if it doesn't exist.

Example:

var unpackage = require('odt-templater/unpackage-odt.js')
unpackage({
	inputFile: 'resources/example/file.odt',
	outputFolder: 'resources/example/file'
}, function() {
	console.log('done unpackaging')
})

Process Flow

The technical flow imagined is as follows:

1. Make an ODT file and modify the styles as desired. This will be your template.
2. Extract the ODT file contents into a folder and modify the content.xml to contain mustache properties.
3. Write a book in markdown, with frontmatter metadata at the start.
4. Use a tool like pandoc to convert your markdown to an ODT file.
5. Extract the content.xml file from the markdown ODT.
6. Repackage a new ODT file using the template and the extracted content.xml, as well as the frontmatter metadata, to create the final styled ODT file.

TODO

• Although pandoc is absolutely amazing, I'd like a tool that does the markdown->ODT process in JS, so that a user doesn't need to install pandoc.
• It would be super neat to make a mapping of the styles.xml and settings.xml possible properties (from the ODT specs) and make a more human-readable object. E.g. the styles.xml has font-face-decls which I think means "font face declerations"? Maybe just linking to a resource that lists all the properties available would be fine.

License

Published under the Very Open License.

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