One of the programs I use heavily in Ubuntu is Open/LibreOffice as part of my work specifically Draw.
I recently upgraded to Natty 11.04 (clean install) obviously this has meant switching to LibreOffice. I know I can go back to OpenOffice if I want to but Oracle seem to be more interested in lawyers than FOSS and I'm sure LO will be a lot better in a short period of time.
The only problem I have found switching is a strange (irritating) difference which doesn't seem to have a config setting that I can change. In OO When I select an image and insert a new one it will "replace" the original using the same dimensions in LO this is not the case the image is simply added to the page whether you select an image on the page or not.
I did find an OO extension which provides the same functionality
Change picture extension - http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/ChangePicture
The main issue is the extension doesn't use the "working directory" of LO so you have to navigate to the correct directory each time (censored). As I will be doing this for 4 pictures per document and over 1000 documents and possibly many more in the future my sanity is at stake.
So if any one has any insights on the easiest way to solve this one thanks in advance.
LibreOffice is the same office suite that has been shipped in previous Ubuntu releases. Many of LibreOffice's first improvements were patches from the go-ooo project which were already being used in major Linux distributions. If expected and optimal behavior changed from one release to the next that is a regression and you should file a bug about it.
The OpenDocument Format is actually a zipped XML format. It may be possible to write a script to replace the images since you are having to repeat the action so many times.