Customer Reviews

OpenOffice.org Macros Explained

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If you want to program OOo macros, then this is about the only book on the market. OOo macro programming is definitely not trivial, therefore, neither is this book. It is big. There are a lot of code snippets and examples, but you will still probably need to go the Macros and API section of the OOo online forum for help when it actually comes time to write your macro(s).

I found the available downloadable PDF to be invaluable when finding specific examples in the book that dealt with a specific call or method. I could search that for a term, and find where is was used in a code example in the printed book. Instructions on downloading the PDF are in the book.

Though the PDF is supposed to be an update of the book, I found no differences.

Documentation for open source products is universally poor, so one NEEDS a book like this. It is value for the money spent.

and nobody has ever told you.
This books contains everything you need to become a macro-master. Even if you are not so deep founded in programming you will be able to follow the examples and write your own in a few time.
Well written, the author offer a post-sale service on his web site with updates, errata and a full e-book copy.
A must have if you need to push your [..]pedal to the metal.

The book is good structured, easy for learning also for persons as me that haven't a good knnowledge of pc programming, but also for those having deep knowledge and pc programming as daily job

The book on this page is the first edition written before OOo version 2.0. There is significant material related to 2.0, but, OOo is now on version 3.x. Almost all of the material is still accurate, but, the book is now long out of print.

I updated the book a few years back, but, the second revision was never published. Recently, I saw fit to update the text with new subroutines and functions that have been added over the past few years. It is a big job, and I am moving slowly on the task because I am busy and have no particular financial incentive. At the time of this writing, however, I have at least the first ten chapters available on my web site as a free download. I would post a link, but, I expect that this may not be allowed by Amazon, so I guess that you need to work a little bit to find my web site. Search on the authors name and the text OpenOffice.