OpenOffice.org Macros Explained (Paperback)

~ Andrew Pitonyak (Author), Andrew Pitonyak (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Providing complete and thorough coverage of macro programming in OpenOffice.org, this guide teaches users to create their own macros and to understand their underlying structure. An introduction to the creation and management of macros in OpenOffice is presented, and each function and command is described. Specific techniques to perform a variety of commonly requested functions are provided, including actions common to all applications in the OpenOffice.org suite, such as printing or saving files, as well as those specific to the individual application—Write, Calc, Impress, and Draw. Numerous examples and explanations demonstrate proper techniques and discuss known problems and solutions. The underlying data structure is discussed, and techniques are introduced to evaluate OpenOffice objects, facilitating the use of returned objects in the absence of sufficient documentation by the original programming team.

About the Author

Andrew Pitonyak is a lead software engineer for Qwest and is known as “the macro guy” on OpenOffice.org forums. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Product Details

• Paperback: 334 pages
• Publisher: Hentzenwerke Publishing (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930919514
• ISBN-13: 978-1930919518
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #188,848 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Useful, February 15, 2006

By	S. Adams (Tennessee) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been playing with openoffice macros for several months after using some VBA over the past few years. Initally it was very difficult. I found this book to be very helpful. The material is DENSE - you will be frustrated if you try to read it cover to cover. My suggestion for those who want to learn OO macros is download the StarOffice manuals (free), download the Xray macro (free), start with Calc macros (easiest) and read the pertinent parts of this book. OO macros are harder than MS Office in the beginning, but I've found that it is now EASIER for me to write a macro in OO.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Confused, rather random description, June 28, 2005

By	T. Hill - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Sadly, this book suffers from a common malady: it explains the simple stuff well, but does a bad job with more complex material. IMHO this is the exact *opposite* of what is needed here. OOo macros have the potential to be powerful, but good luck figuring this out from the book. The first 8 chapters do an adequate job of describing the core BASIC language (not very useful, since OOo online help does that). However, the complexities of the UNO and the OOo object model in general are very poorly described.

The book suffers badly from a lack of diagrams -- there are none! So figuring out the object hierarchy is left as an exercise of reverse-engineering the text. To make this harder, the text jumps all over the place, sometimes talking about one object, sometimes another. Core concepts like "object", "interface" and "service" are left with fuzzy descriptions and are used erroneously in many places, leaving the distinct impression that the author is himself unsure of the meanings.

I set myself an exercise to create a macro to insert and format a table at the current cursor position. Finding the necessary information in this book was an exercise in frustration. With no clear object model and muddy text its unclear when you are dealing with an object, a service, a property or a structure. In the end I was able to partly get what I wanted, but it took endless experiments to try to overcome the lack of clarity in the text.

Overall, this book reads like a rather poorly organized cookbook. I'm giving it 2 stars only because it has no real competition and if you invest a great deal of time reading between the lines and studying the examples, *and* trying to make sense of the text, you might be able to create a few useful OOo macros.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Synopsis, December 13, 2005

By	Tom D. (Michigan) - See all my reviews

The first eight chapters provide numerous working examples of the core language; including features that I did not find in the help. Numerous bugs and work arounds are demonstrated. New features introduced in OOo 2.0 are mentioned in the text. It might have been helpful in the file section, if the author had provided a reference to the SimpleFileAccess service.

The Developer's Guide for the OOo API is over 1000 pages long. It is, therefore, not a surprise that this book does not provide exhausitive coverage for the internal API. When a topic is covered, however, there are typically complete working examples and descriptive text for the topic. For example, I had trouble inserting and naming my tables until I noticed that the book includes a tip that a text table needs to be named after it is inserted into the document.

Not all topics are covered exhaustively. Again, considering text tables, no method is provided to individually enumerate all cells in a text table. Numerous complicated text table examples are provided, however, including methods to select and copy entire text tables. Although, the author does not provide a solution for every problem that I have needed to solve, there is generally a pointer along the way and a simpler example to get me started. For example, I read about the current controller in the "UNO and the Dispatcher" section. The controller is then used to select things such as tables and cells, but I had to figure out for myself that I could also use the controller to select an entire row or column. The simpler a problem, the more likely it is to be solved.

The book was published before Base was available and it provides no coverage for the Databse capability built into OOo.

In the section on Universal Network Objects, the author provides examples demonstrating how to create and use your own data types in OOo Basic (this should have been in the help. This section also provides simple definitions for things such as Interface, Service, and Context.

After buying the book, be certain to obtain the PDF from the publisher, this is one of the few books that provides the PDF. The PDF is very useful for searching through the text. Although the examples are all available from the publisher as well, I found that it was usually just as easy to copy them from the PDF file to where I need them.