[Scribus] scribus and openoffice

[Chantal Rosmuller]

Hi list,

One my customers publishes books. We are plannign to migrate to openoffice and 
eventually to Linux desktops. 
Writing, editing and layout are all done in Microsoft Word. At the moment a 
pretty complex template is used to make sure the layout is maintained.
We have already established that it is impossible to build a template with the 
same functionality for Openoffice. This is not a really big problem because 
the template is not 100% user friendly, but an alternative solution is needed 
before we can migrate to openoffice.

And yes I know it is possible to use Microsoft Office in a Linux environment, 
but then we need a licence for crossover office and we will in time have to 
spend a lot of money for an office upgrade.
So it would be nice if this can be avoided.

The person in charge of publishing has already worked with Scribus (more 
information in the previous post) and she likes it. Scribus is however too 
complicated for the writers, translaters and editors.
finishing a book in openoffice and the simply import it into Scribus is not a 
solution because of the workflow. Writing, editing and layouting are not 
done "one after the other" but can occur at the same time.

We are looking for a way to connect the data between the Writer document and 
the Scribus document, or maybe a script or program that is able to translate 
the Openoffice document to Scribus in combination with a simple writer 
template? An extra complexity is that a lot of translaters work from home, 
they may not be willing to use a Openoffice, lthough it is my personal 
opionion that that is not a really great sacrifice because it's free. Someone  
has told me that it is possible to install a small plugin for MS Office, with 
this plugin it is possible to read documents in the open document format and 
also use Openoffice templates. That may be an interesting alternative.  

As you can see we are still in the brainstorming phase. Any advise on this 
subject will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, chantal