Meta-command convert, corresponding to script appy/pod/converter.py, allows to call LibreOffice in server mode to ask him to convert a input file to some supported output format.
As a prerequisite to launching this command, LibreOffice must run in server mode, as explained in this page (read section named Managing LibreOffice).
The following example asks LibreOffice to convert a DOCX file into PDF.
appy convert /home/convertor/Planning.docx pdf
That being said, in the majority of cases, the input file to convert is generally an ODT or ODS file.
On completion, file /home/convertor/Planning.pdf should exist.
Unfortunately, for Windows users, meta-command appy is not available yet. You have 2 options: the first and wiser option is start using Linux 😁. The second is to determine paths to your Python interpreter and to appy/pod/converter.py, to produce a command that will look like this one.
C:\Program Files\Python312\python.exe C:\Users\Linus\Python\Python312\site-packages\appy\pod\converter.py C:\Users\Linus\fichier.docx pdf
Reference
All program options are documented hereafter.
Usage: appy convert fileToConvert output [options]
or : python3 converter.py fileToConvert output [options]
"fileToConvert" is the absolute or relative pathname of the file you
want to convert (or whose content like indexes need to be refreshed)
"output" can be the output format, that must be one of:
odt, ods, odp, htm, html, rtf, txt, csv, pdf, swf, doc, xls, ppt, docx, xlsx
or can be the absolute path to the result file, whose extension must
correspond to a valid output format.
The Python interpreter running this command must be UNO-enabled (ie, the one
being included in the LibreOffice distribution).
LibreOffice must be running in server mode prior to running this command.
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-e SERVER, --server=SERVER
The server IP or hostname that runs LibreOffice
(defaults to "localhost").
-p PORT, --port=PORT The port on which LibreOffice runs (default is 2002).
-t TEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE
The path to a LibreOffice template from which you may
import styles.
-o OPTIMAL_COL_WIDTHS, --optimalColumnWidths=OPTIMAL_COL_WIDTHS
Set this option to "True" if you want LibreOffice to
optimize column widths for all tables included in the
document. Alternately, specify a regular expression:
only tables whose name match will be processed. And if
the expression starts with char "~", only tables not
matching it will be processed. WARNING - If, for some
table, columns are both required to be optimized
(parameter "optimalColumnWidths") and distributed
(parameter "distributeColumns", only optimization will
take place.
-d DISTRIBUTE_COLUMNS, --distributeColumns=DISTRIBUTE_COLUMNS
Set this option to "True" if you want LibreOffice to
distribute columns evenly for all tables included in
the document. Alternately, specify a regular
expression: only tables whose name match will be
processed. And if the expression starts with char "~",
only tables not matching it will be processed. WARNING
- If, for some table, columns are both required to be
optimized (parameter "optimalColumnWidths") and
distributed (parameter "distributeColumns", only
optimization will take place.
-r RESOLVE_FIELDS, --resolveFields=RESOLVE_FIELDS
Set this option to "True" if you want LibreOffice to
replace the content of fields by their values. It can
be useful, for instance, if the POD result must be
included in another document, but the total number of
pages must be kept as is. Set this option to
"PageCount" instead of "True" to update this field
only. Note that field "PageNumber" is never resolved,
whatever the value of the option, because its value is
different from one page to another.
-s SCRIPT, --script=SCRIPT
You can specify here (the absolute path to) a Python
script containing functions that the converter will
call in order to customize the process of manipulating
the document via the LibreOffice UNO interface. The
following functions can be defined in your script and
must all accept a single parameter: the Converter
instance. ***updateTableOfContents***, if defined,
will be called for producing a custom table of
contents. At the time this function is called by the
converter, converter.toc will contain the table of
contents, already updated by LibreOffice.
***finalize*** will be called at the end of the
process, just before saving the result.
-v, --verbose Writes more information on stdout.
-f PDF_OPTIONS, --pdf=PDF_OPTIONS
If the output format is PDF, you can define here
conversion options, as a series of comma-separated
key=value pairs, as in
"ExportNotes=True,PageRange=1-20". Available options
are documented in https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/API
/Tutorials/PDF_export.
-i CSV_OPTIONS, --csv=CSV_OPTIONS
If the ouput format is CSV, you can define here
conversion options, as a comma-separated list of
values. Default options are: 59,34,76,1.Values
correspond to ASCII codes. The first one represents
the field separator. The most frequent values are: 59
(the semi-colon ;), 44 (the comma ,) and 9 (a tab).
The second value represents the text delimiter. The
most frequent values are: 34 (double quotes), 39
(single quotes) or no value at all (as in 59,,76,1).
The third one is the file encoding. The most frequent
values are 76 (UTF-8) and 12 (ISO-8859-1). Complete
documentation about CSV options can be found at https:
//wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Spre
adsheets/Filter_Options#Filter_Options_for_the_CSV_Fil
ter.
-c, --ppp Enable the POD post-processor (PPP). The PPP is a
series of UNO commands that react to PPP instructions
encoded within object names and must be executed at
the end of the process, when all other tasks have been
performed on the document, just before converting it
to another format or saving it to disk or as a stream.
-a STREAM, --stream=STREAM
By default (stream = "auto"), if you specify
"localhost" as server running LibreOffice, the
converter and LibreOffice will exchange the input and
result files via the disk. If you specify anything
else, the converter will consider that LibreOffice
runs on a distant server: input and result files will
be carried as streams via the network. If you want to
bypass this logic and force exchange as streams or
files on disk, set this option to "True" for stream or
"False" for disk. You may also specify "in" (the input
file is streamed and the result is written on disk) or
"out" (the input file is read on disk and the result
is streamed).
-g PAGESTART, --pageStart=PAGESTART
Specify an integer number different from 1 and the
produced document's page numbering will start at this
number.
