Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

Hello folks!

I have a big problem. And I hope that you have some good advice for me on what I shall do.

What my system is supposed to do:

I have some co-worker that creates word documents.
The Word documents is supposed to be presented in Joomla in some way or another.

My idea was using to create a HTML document of the Word document, and then use a wrapper in Joomla to present the document in a portal. the address of an wrapper in Joomla is like this: http://server/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=39

But it must also be possible to create PDF of the Word document saved as MHTML-document in Word.

So I tried html2pdf FPDF creator. The problem is that when I have a webpage in a wrapper, I don't really have a Html-File. So I get a error since I only have wrapper and not HTML. So, no PDF. I attached a really beautiful picture made in paint to show some of what I was thinking.

At this moment, I am kind of stuck what to do. I really need some advice.

To sum it up:

- I need a way to present a word document / HTML document in joomla.
- I need a previous next button for the word document / HTML document
- I need to be able to create a PDF out of the document.

Does anyone have any good advice of what I should do?


Bhead

in my opinion word documents are awful for displaying on the web

I would simply use the text to create a joomla content item.

I cannot see why you would create a separate html document from the word doccument rather than simply create a joomla content item?

If it is required to create content outside of joomla, I always paste text as plain text because word always brings heaps of unnecessary formatting and the font styles / sizes will almost certainly not match that of your site.

Once the text is a joomla content, you can use the print and pdf functions.

The problem with creating content in Joomla, is that the Word document have plenty of formatting, pictures and setup which I don't think Joomla can handle very well. I tried to create content (by copy and paste HTML code) but I lost a lot of formatting.

I think that part of the beauty of the cms is that you get consistent pages following the styling set for the site.

You can always create any necessary styles to replicate your word documents. These style can then be applied to headings etc in the joomla content. As for images, it is usually necessary to have images sized correctly for web pages. You may not notice 5 or 6 1MB photos dropped into a word document on your local machine, but you certainly would if you used them in a html document.

You need to bear in mind that even if you create a document with all the word formatting, it may be that the end user does not see the same. For example if they do not have the same fonts on their computer, they will not see it anyway.

Personally I prefer to use clean html formatted with css styles from the stylesheet. Works better across browsers and with search engines.

If you need to preserve very specific formatting then pdf output is the way to go, but the visitor is normally taken to the pdf viewer rather than view within the site itself.

I don't know if I can create necessary styles. I need to be able to transfer a word document into joomla pretty quick. And preserve the formatting, and pictures.

It's going to be an offline installation most probably, and very static as well when it's up and running. The pictures that is in the word docs, is of a normal size.

I am also looking for a way to divide the word documents into smaller HTML pages.

bono_head wrote: I don't know if I can create necessary styles. I need to be able to transfer a word document into joomla pretty quick. And preserve the formatting, and pictures.

It's going to be an offline installation most probably, and very static as well when it's up and running. The pictures that is in the word docs, is of a normal size.

I am also looking for a way to divide the word documents into smaller HTML pages.

If you paste PLAIN Text from the word Doc (paste it into Notepad First) into a Joomla Article, you will then be able to use the WYSIWYG editor to format the text any way you like. Upload copies of the illustrations to media manager and use the editor to place the photos in your new article.

You can use the page break function to break the article up into smaller pieces.

Problem with pasting PLAIN text into notepad and THEN into Joomla, is that the people producing documents will kill me :-)

I have to find another way. I have to find a way of getting documents from word, to showing in joomla.

Any ideas?

bono_head wrote: Problem with pasting PLAIN text into notepad and THEN into Joomla, is that the people producing documents will kill me :-)

I have to find another way. I have to find a way of getting documents from word, to showing in joomla.

Any ideas?

if you paste Word Code into Joomla - Joomla will kill you.

The WYSIWYG Editor WILL permit you, unfortunately, to make your Joomla pages look like a ransom note if that's what you're after, but you MUST strip the Word Code First, there just isn't any other way.

I just tried viewing a pdf in the wrapper and it will work.

I also did some googling and found that you can pass parameters in the url to control how the adobe plugin will display the pdf

e.g. I did a link like
which gets rid of much of the toolbar mess

Need to test across browsers, but this may be the way to go for you.

Get an app to reliably convert your word docs to pdf and display with a wrapper iframe. You get your navigation through the pages, your layout etc and it is as fast as you can expect.

Here is the document that I found with the parameters that can be passed to the pdf plugin

Well I am glad I did a bit of searching and found this stuff out

just tried one with
and it presents the bare document, no sign that it is an embedded pdf and you can navigate through pages with arrow left and right

boo, opera does not display inline - it asks if you want to open it.

There may be a workaround, maybe needs further research...

Doing it this way may be fine but have you considered accessibility? When a document is viewed in the PDF Reader it can be searched, downloaded and other facilities added (no copying, password, etc.). The way suggested may be very restricted and is another process step in getting things on-line. If someone wants a correction!

Interested in your opinions on this as I'm doing a site for older people and all content must be at least basically accessible.

Thanks.

I still hold to the position that I stated in my earlier posts.

toubkal wrote: Personally I prefer to use clean html formatted with css styles from the stylesheet. Works better across browsers and with search engines.

If I had word doc to display in a website, I would convert them to plain text and format for the web

But others have different priorities and complex word docs can take time to reformat especially if they include charts / tables etc

I thank all of you for your answers. Since it's friday night here I haven't read through everything yet. But from I gather: Thanks for the answers, and so much for a saturday off :-)

bOO

Yes, it's a big problem for me that I have to present Word-documents on the web. The way it's working now (different system), is that the designers copy and paste word into another system directly.

What I would love to have, is a button in Word, that puts the documents on the web for me.

The PDF looks interesting. Maybe I will have to see what the boss thinks about that.

But if not with PDF:

What should I do with the word -> joomla -> presentable dilemma? That's easy, and hopefully somewhat automatic?

Thanks for all the responses so far!

Bhead

Simple solution available.

Download the Edocs plug-in for Joomla at extensions.joomla.org and then you can embed a document in any content article by adding the following super simple code:

{edocs}path/folder/document.extension,width,height{/edocs}


It works with Word, PDFs & PowerPoint and because it is embedded in an article it will maintain the look of the template.

(The paths are absolute so if you get stuck you can can contact me here-> hawaiiincorporated.com)

Good Luck!