Sun’s Weblog Publisher is an extension for StarOffice and OpenOffice which allows you to post on your weblog directly from the comfort of your desktop application. It’s available here for 9,95 US$ (+15% VAT if you live in the EU).
If you can read this text, Weblog Publisher is working with my weblog (which uses WordPress, other blogs are also supported). Installation is rather easy, I recommend reading the instructions you can find under “ Frequently Asked Questions” in the store since they contain more information than the readme.txt file which comes with the software. In my version of OpenOffice (2.1.0), new packages are installed under Tools > Extension Manager and not Package Manager, so don’t let this confuse you.
Now let’s try some things:
A list (with bullets):
- This
- That
- And that as well
- That
A numbered list:
- First
- Second
- Third
Highlighting text
A picture: (edit: stupid me, forgot to add it – but it would have worked, see my wonderful drawing below ;)).
A table:
| Today | Tomorrow | The day after tomorrow |
| 50% | 70% | 10 |
Vector graphics (grouped):
Different text sizes, fonts, styles and c o l o u r s
French and German special characters: àéäçöüß
(Traditional) Chinese text: ????????????????????????????
Click here to download the original open office file (OpenDocument Text .odt) and compare it to this entry.
Conclusion (edited, you can also download posts and edit them with the Weblog Publisher): Seems to be working quite reasonably well, worth the money IMHO. Things which could still be improved :
The bulleted list (before I opened this post to edit it in WordPress, it contained line breaks at the wrong places)
The Chinese text (transformed into question marks)
I haven’t yet figured out how to add titles to links in OpenOffice – probably not possible?
- Some of you might not like that the table doesn’t validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional
- My drawing skills 😉
- The post date was placed in the future (some hours ahead) after I edited this entry (more than once). If you can’t see your post anymore, it’s most likely still there, but you’ll have to correct the timestamp (or wait).
- Updated on Jan. 22nd (using WordPress, which messed up the some line breaks – and corrected some others): Doesn’t seem to be working with Blogger.com if you’re using your Google account (see comment by Chris).
- Like most WYSIWYW web editors, it apparently inserts unnecessary tags, which can also make editing the post in WordPress a bit complicated.
- What about updates? As you can see, Sun’s Weblog Publisher isn’t working perfectly yet, however, reading Brad’s post, it seems you’re expected to purchase it again if you want to use the newest version. On the other hand I was able to login at findmyorder.com and download the (identical) product again and I don’t remember having purchased any sort of “extended download service”. I’m therefore currently not sure how updates are being handled by Sun.