Issue 83597

Summary:	Writer does not support "attaching" a template
Product:	Writer	Reporter:	r_p_bouman <roland.bouman>
Component:	open-import	Assignee:	requirements <requirements>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	issues@sw <issues>
Severity:	Trivial
Priority:	P3	CC:	issues, Mathias_Bauer
Version:	OOo 2.3
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
URL:	http://taming-openoffice-org.com/newsite/?page_id=27
Issue Type:	ENHANCEMENT	Latest Confirmation in:	---
Developer Difficulty:	---

Description r_p_bouman 2007-11-13 09:58:28 UTC

Writer currently does not support "attaching" a template to a document. 

That is, documents can be created based on a template. The document then
maintains a link to the template, allowing one to update the styles in the
document should the template change. 

However, it is impossible to edit the link and specify another, new template
that should be considered to be the basis. At the same time, the link between a
document and its template can be broken - this may happen when the template is
not available while opening the document. In that case the user is prompted and
the link between document and template may be broken at the user's request. 

This asymmetry means that accidental breakage of the link makes it impossible to
reconcile the document. The document is forever lost after breaking the link.

Another case where one needs to change the link is when a new version of the
template is created and the location and/or name of the new template differs
from the old one. (There might be various technical, organizational or political
reasons for a change in location/name)

Described functionality is (and has always been) available in Microsoft Word:

Tools > Templates and Add-ins > Attach, select template, Open 

See "http://taming-openoffice-org.com/newsite/?page_id=27" and observe the
almost hilarious mismatch in functionality for feature "Apply a different
template to a document". Suggested workaround for OOo cannot be taken seriously
when editing booklike volumes of standardized documents. 

Please fix this.

Comment 1 michael.ruess 2007-11-13 12:39:21 UTC

Reassigned to requirements.

Comment 2 r_p_bouman 2007-11-13 15:22:38 UTC

It looks like it is only missing from the UI. That is:

- We can view the current template, Menu>File>Properties; Tab: General, last
property in dialog "Template" does show the title of the current template, but
it is not eitable.
- Unzipping an .odf, and modifying the value of 

document('meta.xml')\office:document-meta\office:meta\meta:template\@xlink:href

actually accomplishes the desired effect. Note that

document('meta.xml')\office:document-meta\office:meta\meta:template\@xlink:title

would need to be updated as well (this seems to be reported in the properties
dialog as the template name)

So, it is currently possible to fix the link, but not in a way that is
acceptable to end-users.

I wonder whether it would be possible to use macros to set the property...

Comment 3 Mathias_Bauer 2007-11-13 19:18:08 UTC

You are right, "only" the UI is missing. IIRC this issue is a duplicate and the
older issue contains a link to a Basic macro that provides the missing UI.

If I only could remember this issue number ...

Comment 4 Mathias_Bauer 2007-11-13 19:22:59 UTC

Found it. :-)

It's issue 52783 and it has a link to an extension that should provide this
functionality.

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 52783 ***

Comment 5 Mathias_Bauer 2007-11-13 19:23:20 UTC

closing as duplicate

Comment 6 Mathias_Bauer 2007-11-13 19:27:01 UTC

now, finally ...