[Issue] Placeholders in PDF export

[eviking]

I've made a template for writer with several placeholders. The user will not always put data in all placeholders...
When printing "empty" placeholders come out blank, which is what I want. I know this can be altered in the options.

Now, when I create a PDF, either by File > Send to > Send as PDF or by exporting empty placeholders are always printed with the predefined placeholder text. This is not what I want

Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Have you tried printing to a PDF driver such as CutePDF?

[eviking]

Thanks for the reply Bhikkhu,

Printing to a PDF driver works - i.e. it prints a blank space or the predefined placeholder text according to the settings in OOo.

This would be a workaround, but make things more complicated for the user. The File > Send > Document as PDF is a major selling point for OpenOffice.org in the first place and having to use a separate PDF generator seems rather redundant.

I don't understand why the built in PDF generator does this - The placeholder text is just converted to plain text and renders the document useless for anything but review purposes.

[foxcole]

The built-in PDF generator is not a sophisticated program, it's very basic. I'm not sure how many people in the world are trying to do what you're doing, but I couldn't find an existing report in the Issue Tracker, so you might want to register there and file one. Be sure to include a link to this thread.

[eviking]

Thanks for the suggestion, foxcole.

I registered this issue here:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=93190