[Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

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CanIHasCheeseburger
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[Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by CanIHasCheeseburger »

Hi,
First off, I've been a long time user of microsoft office. Second, I need to make beautiful documents and share them with my coworkers who are using MS office. Now that I tried OOo, the default colors are bugging me : they're ugly! I know I can design my own colors, this is not what I am asking. I don't want to re create them one by one. What I want is a way to have a set of predefined beautiful smooth colors in OOo.

Is there a way to do this? to import them? or an addon or something? or whatever that could help me to achieve this?

Thanks
Last edited by CanIHasCheeseburger on Fri Jan 23, 2009 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Safway
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Re: Smooth colors in OOo

Post by Safway »

Well, OO.o can be configured and customized to your heart's content--if you know coding. That is a major benefit from what you used to use. That is, in fact, what other distributors have done.

Now, can a normal (you and I) chap do what you want? Probably. But when you say "default colors" what do you mean? You are vague and so it is hard for us to help you.

The very best I can do for you is tell you to do a generic Google search for what I think might help you. Here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cu ... h&aq=f&oq=
If someone posts a fix for your question, then please post a quick thank you and then go to your first post, use the edit button to add [Solved] as the first word of the title so other people can rely on the fix as well.
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acknak
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Re: Smooth colors in OOo

Post by acknak »

What I want is a way to have a set of predefined beautiful smooth colors in OOo.
You can load a pre-defined color palette. Unfortunately, OOo does not even make that easy; it's design for color management is very primitive, to say the least.
  1. In Writer, use the Drawing toolbar to insert a graphic object, an ellipse, e.g..
  2. On the object, right-click > Area > Colors
  3. Click the "Load Color List" button (it has only an icon: the standard "open file" icon)
  4. Choose any ".soc" file you like
  5. OK
This new color list will be the default for Writer; each OOo application can have it's own color list. You can use the same recipe to load color lists for each of the apps.

There are several color lists shipped with OOo (I have: cmyk, gallery, html, palette_en-US, standard, sun-color, web; "standard" is the default list), but none of those have a "smooth" range of colors. The palette that I like that fits your description is named "verlaufend.soc", but I don't remember where I found it. I've attached a copy of it (with color names translated to English) here. Just download it; unzip it, and load it as described above.

If you don't care for that one, try a Google search; I'm sure that's how I found this one, and there are lots more.

There are also utilities that can generate color palette files in different formats. You can use something like that to generate your own palette files.
Attachments
OOo_colors.zip
(2.59 KiB) Downloaded 2572 times
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CanIHasCheeseburger
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Re: Smooth colors in OOo

Post by CanIHasCheeseburger »

Thank you both!

acknak > this is sort of what I was looking for, this palette is much better then the default one! Thanks!
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symtex
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by symtex »

Here's an HTML color table I found some time ago.....don't remember where.
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html_color_table.zip
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sambody
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by sambody »

I've made a color palette (or color list) inspired by the Google sites color palette. I've added an extra green column to match the number of columns in OpenOffice. The result looks like this:
Openoffice Google color palet - preview
Openoffice Google color palet - preview
openoffice-google-colors2.png (4.05 KiB) Viewed 55687 times
To install (this will REPLACE your standard color palette):
0. download the file google.soc.zip (attached to this post below), unzip it on your desktop for example;
1. In Openoffice Writer, make the Drawing toolbar visible if it isn't already(''View > Toolbars > Drawings'');
2. from that toolbar, choose a drawing tool (Rectangle for example)
3. In the main top menu, go to ''Format > Object > Area'' (this is not accessible if a drawing tool is not active)
4. choose Color
5. Click on the Load or Save icon, find the downloaded palet (google.soc)

If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice

You could adapt the soc file in a text editor to suit your needs.

Hope this helps anyone.
Attachments
google.soc.zip
openoffice color palet inspired by Google sites
(1.08 KiB) Downloaded 1843 times
Last edited by sambody on Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:56 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by Hagar Delest »

I like the one provided by acknak but my problem was to have a better 'visibility' of the colors when they are displayed in the color chooser. So here are my 3 proposals, I've kept the 3rd on my system (I thought that that first one would have helped but it doesn't IMHO, then rearranged the 2nd to have a better view again, following the colors order).
First palette is made of 2 blocks, first one for the Saturation variation only, second one for Brightness.
Second palette is made of colors with the pairs of lines Saturation & Brightness.
Third palette is the second one but with colors arranged in a natural color order.
Palettes.png
Palettes.png (6.81 KiB) Viewed 56955 times
standard-1.zip
(1.95 KiB) Downloaded 1499 times
standard-2.zip
(2.01 KiB) Downloaded 1376 times
standard-3.zip
(2.02 KiB) Downloaded 2042 times
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floral
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by floral »

sambody wrote:I've made a color palette (or color list) inspired by the Google sites color palette. I've added an extra green column to match the number of columns in OpenOffice. The result looks like this:

To install (this will REPLACE your standard color palette):
0. download the file google.soc.zip (attached to this post below), unzip it on your desktop for example;
1. In Openoffice Writer, make the Drawing toolbar visible if it isn't already(''View > Toolbars > Drawings'');
2. from that toolbar, choose a drawing tool (Rectangle for example)
3. In the main top menu, go to ''Format > Object > Area'' (this is not accessible if a drawing tool is not active)
4. choose Color
5. Click on the Load or Save icon, find the downloaded palet (google.soc)

If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice

You could adapt the soc file in a text editor to suit your needs.

Hope this helps anyone.
A big thank you for this guide!
BUT it doesn't replace my existing palette forever. When I shutdown the program and open it again the old palette is there again :crazy:
How can I keep the new palette forever ? :?:
(I am using libreoffice, i don't know if this has anything to do with it...)
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acknak
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by acknak »

Libreoffice uses a different location for its settings profile; look for the standard.soc palette file in
$HOME/.libreoffice/3/user/config/standard.soc
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floral
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by floral »

acknak wrote:Libreoffice uses a different location for its settings profile; look for the standard.soc palette file in
$HOME/.libreoffice/3/user/config/standard.soc
I found that and I replaced it with the one .soc that I wanted, but while the standard.soc is not in the folder, I can see the old template appearing every time I open it. :cry:
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floral
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by floral »

Solved! As sambody says, you have to rename it to standard.soc
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Hagar Delest
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by Hagar Delest »

I was fed up with the scrolling of the dialog because of too many colors, so I've reduced it so that all is displayed at once.
Note that the Google style palette is rather nice too (some posts above).
Palette.png
Palette.png (3.73 KiB) Viewed 53623 times
Attachments
standard.zip
(1.13 KiB) Downloaded 1261 times
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sukhdev
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by sukhdev »

Dear Moderator,
May I suggest marking "Brilliant Solutions" to amazing posts such as givenhere. Marking [Solved] is understating the solutions and being over modest. A great help for children and me too would be be arranging colors in VIBGYOR manner. It is easy to remember.
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by tays01s »

Does anyone know where to find the place to copy a new 'standard.soc' to for Libre 4.0 on OSX?
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Hagar Delest
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by Hagar Delest »

Why should it be different?
Have you made a search for that file?
Have you asked the LO people?
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by RoryOF »

On my Ubuntu 12.04 system it lives in /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.4/presets/config
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Hagar Delest
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by Hagar Delest »

I think that this is the default used when a new user profile is created. The one to be changed is in the profile I think.
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tays01s
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by tays01s »

This is it:

/Users//Library/Application Support/LibreOffice/3/user/config/standard.soc

Change the /3/ to /4/ if using v4.x.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by Hagar Delest »

The new default for AOO 4 will change to 12 columns layout instead of 10, hence wrecking the current palettes.
Use it only with AOO 4. Works also with former versions but layout will not give the sorted effect.

Here is a proposal, with an additional line at bottom with colors standardized for the web.
Palette AOO 4.png
Palette AOO 4.png (12.26 KiB) Viewed 49542 times
standard.soc.zip
(1.53 KiB) Downloaded 987 times
Edit: the equivalent for LibreOffice (they changed the layout of the colors table).
Custom.png
Custom.png (3.77 KiB) Viewed 11260 times
Custom.soc.zip
(7.41 KiB) Downloaded 271 times
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jdorenbush
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by jdorenbush »

I created a color palette based on Google Doc's color palette. It's designed to fit the 12 column color palette in LibreOffice 4.2.

Image

I created a Google Doc to gather each of the colors and their respective names -- if anyone is interested in accessing the information I've made the document public.
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standard.soc.zip
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by acknak »

Nice! Thanks.
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by sambody »

There is another very complete color palette on github, made by Federico Kereki, who explained in his article the scripting behind the color palette generation. Here is a direct download link to the palette.

Here's a screenshot of the palette (libreoffice writer 4 on ubuntu):

Image
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by acknak »

Nice article--thanks for pointing that out!

I'm not sure I really want a palette with almost 1200 colors, but it could be handy at some point.

Also, the download link doesn't work for me. In fact, I couldn't find any way to simply download the palette file from GitHub. I had to download the whole set of files as a .zip and extract the palette file. I probably missed the big red "download" link ;-)
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by karlis »

Ok, i spent some time messing around with this thingie... Created two versions of colour palettes. If they come handy to anyone -- feel free to use. :)
Revised version of Hagar Delest palette above for OOO 4.x 12 column table
Image
standard.soc.extended_KG.zip
(2.44 KiB) Downloaded 865 times
Version 2. Colours stacked vertically. Limited to 12 colours because of that.
Image
standard.soc.vertical_KG.zip
(2.11 KiB) Downloaded 1161 times
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djl47
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by djl47 »

karlis wrote:Version 2. Colours stacked vertically. Limited to 12 colours because of that.
Image
standard.soc.vertical_KG.zip
Thank you so much for creating this. It is much easier to use.
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Re: [Solved] Smooth colors in OOo

Post by djl47 »

sambody wrote:If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice
This forum is a goldmine of already solved problems. Thanks again.
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Richarda44
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by Richarda44 »

:geek: :geek:
karlis wrote:Ok, i spent some time messing around with this thingie... Created two versions of colour palettes. If they come handy to anyone -- feel free to use. :)
Revised version of Hagar Delest palette above for OOO 4.x 12 column table
...
I too am thankful for the work people have put in to this feature which I have used for the last year. It does easily everything I want.

Yet I am reticent to raise one question about it. The fourth column (green) and the fifth (red green) to my eye are the wrong way round The red-green looks more like lime - a mixture of yellow and green? Is it my eyes or an uncalibrated monitor I wonder.

Thanks for a great palette and a great forum
Richard
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wakh.ru
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Re: [Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

Post by wakh.ru »

My versions
https://yadi.sk/d/qEQeJpanog83h
standard_1.soc..standard_9.soc - loaded from forums
standard_9_lite.soc - _9 lite mod.
standard_full.soc - _9 extended mod
standard_lite.soc - _9 extended lite mod 1
standard_lite2.soc - _9 extended lite mod 2 - my choice
standard_normal.soc - original
OpenOffice 4.1.1 on Windows 8
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