Dear OpenOffice.org community, This is the 2-weekly announcement of current issues regarding the OOo API project which I want to hightlight to the community.
*** ================================================================= *** Todays Issue: Contributing to the OOo API Project *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- The OOo community needs YOUR contribution too. And we are sure that you can contribute real value to OOo. Don't know how? YOU too can contribute to the OOo API project by: - Reviewing the documentation and reporting issues if you find any - Useing the OOo API and reporting issues if you find any - Answering the Questions of other Users of the OOo API - Summarizing answers which were given to questions (CodeSnippets) - Contributing your larger API examples to our example collection - Pointing out important articles for the [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEWSLETTER - Tracking unanswered questions on this mailing list - Preparing the next issue of [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPIC - Writing Test Cases - Translating Examples to C++ (NEW!) - Becoming an Official OOo Contributor Each idea contains a short description of how you could help in its respect, one ore more URLs for more information and an estimation about the efford on the task. *** ================================================================= *** Reviewing the documentation and report issues if you find any *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- Besides others, the OOo SDK contains a Developers Guide and a Reference Guide. It's not only important for developers who want to develop applications with OOo to know these well. There is also always room for improvement in such documents. Thus, read the documentation: -> http://api.openoffice.org/DevelopersGuide/DevelopersGuide.html -> http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/module-ix.html And when you find anything to improve which you think should actually be improved, report an issue to IssueZilla. After once being registered with IssueZilla, reporting an issue is just a matter of minutes. *** ================================================================= *** Using the OOo API and reporting issues if you find any *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- Next you might want to use the OOo API for your own projects. Nothing is perfect, thus don't hesitate to report problems you consider worth getting fixed to IssueZilla. Here you find a description of OOos IssueZilla: -> http://www.openoffice.org/project_issues.html After once being registered with IssueZilla, reporting an issue is just a matter of minutes. Of course code examples, well stripped down to the point, would help us even more. Thus count about up to 30 minutes for a complex issue. *** ================================================================= *** Answering the Questions of other Users of the OOo API *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- dev@api.openoffice.org is not an official support medium. But that does not mean, we do not want questions answers. The OOo developers will do their very best to answer questions, but WE NEED YOUR HELP! The OOo core development team is very small compared to competing projects. Thus we cannot answer all questions. If you know an answer of somebody elses question, please post it to the list. If you are not sure, answer anyway, but mention your incertitude. This way you give the core developers more space to answer the tough questions, maybe your next tough question. If you know the answer off hand, it only needs a few minutes to contribute by answering questions. But we appreciate it even more if you have a vague idea and do some research. *** ================================================================= *** Summarizing answers which were given to questions (CodeSnippets) *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you asked a question and got a satisfactory answer with a code example, be so nice and save it for somebody else who might have the same question in future. The mail archive can be searched, but the search features are not good enough, mostly because mails are not structured enough. But there is a better way: Summarize your question and the given answer(s) in an XML format for CodeSnippets. You can find more information here: -> http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/snippets/ To delopy a CodeSnippet, you need about 15 minutes each. Don't you think that the answer given to you was worth it? Please submit the created codesnippet to the mailinglist dev@api.openoffice.org and it will be integrated into the snippet-collection on http://codesnippets.services.openoffice.org/ by one of the comminity members with CVS commit rights. As an addon to easily create codesnippets Paolo Mantovani has created an OO-Basic-Dialog which let you create codesnippets without thinking about the XML-Structure you have to follow. You can get the small piece of software from this location: -> http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/snippets/SnippetCreator.zip A installation instruction is available from the codesnippets main page. *** ================================================================= *** Contributing your larger API examples to our example collection *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you implemented an interesting example using the OOo API, why not share it with others. We want to build a comprehensive collection of code examples using the OOo API. Check out this web page for more information: -> http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/example_collection.html To prepare a code example for public use, it might need some hours, in some cases even weeks. But see what you get for it: examples of others! Open Source Software is sharing and taking. *** ================================================================= *** Pointing out important articles for the [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEWSLETTER *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- There is a monthly newletter of this mailinglist [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is currently maintained by Michael Hoennig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and posted on the 1st of each month to dev@api.openoffice.org and [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you see articles which you consider worth being mentioned in the next [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEWSLETTER, please point them out to the maintainer. You do this by sunmmarizing the issue in the newsltter style. Add the URLs to the articles from the archive. The effort for every article is about 5-10 minutes. -> http://api.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=dev Of course, you are also welcome to volunteer taking this task completely. Just contact the current maintainer to get more information. The effort of maintaining the list is about 2 hours a month plus steadily reading the mailing list articles, which you might do anyway. More information about our newsletter can be found here: -> http://api.openoffice.org/NewsLetter/ *** ================================================================= *** Tracking unanswered questions on this mailing list *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- If there are unanswered questions on the dev@api.openoffice.org mailing list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PENDING is now posted up to three times a month to remind everybody of these issues. Some answers might be easy like "not possible yet", an answer the responsible developer usially can easily come up with. Or the answer could be "check out chapter ... in the Developers Guide" or "search the mailing list archive for keyword ...", but even such answers can be of high value for the person asking. And of course, missing but important feataures should be reported to IssueZilla. This is actually a major motivation for me to be after these issues. Programmability of OOo is important for its success. Unfortunately time is not an endless resource. Thus the core development team cannot answer all questions, definitely the API project leads cannot answer all questions by themselves. But if everybody contributes their share, we can make this mailing list the most helpful place for all questions regarding the OOo API. With the support of a mail client which shows threads, checking out the open issues and deploying them with a link into the archive needs about 5 minutes per issue. Where there are usually about 10-15 unanswered questions every month, the effort fo this task is one hour per month - at least if you follow the list anyway. *** ================================================================= *** Preparing the next issue of [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPIC *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPIC is intended for highlighting a current topic in the field of the OOo API and the OOo SDK. I plan to issue it two times a month. If nothing new available, I will just post this animation. But it would be much better if we had really good new stories to tell, don't you think so? Why not for example present projects here which highly usees the OOo API? Maybe your project next time? I am sure you will have other ideas. The effort in preparing an issue for [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPIC highly depends on the content, I guess between one hour and one day in most cases. It's up to you, get involved! *** ================================================================= *** Writing Test Cases *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- The qadevooo API test framework is used for automated tests of the OOo API. It also can run JUnit tests from Java test framework. But native test cases can either be coded in Java or BASIC. Contributing test cases is highly appreciated! -> http://qa.openoffice.org/qadevOOo_doc/index.html The effort in writing test cases definitely need some initial learning of the framework. After this, each single test only needs 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the complexity.Please contact our QA team (see website above) if you are interested. *** ================================================================= *** Translating Examples to C++ (NEW!) *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- A nice contribution would be to translate the Java examples from the Developers Guide to C++. The effort will be about 1 hour and more, depending on the size of the example. *** ================================================================= *** Becoming an Official OOo Contributor *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to provide us with source code or documentation, we need a copyright assignment: -> http://www.openoffice.org/contributing.html Please read this document to learn about how and why. This copyright assignment is NOT needed for reporting issues, CodeSnippets or answers on the mailing list. And then be welcome to the OOo Development team! *** ================================================================= If you have ideas what the next issue of [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPIC should be about, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Juergen+Andreas -- other resources regarding this list: OOo project website: http://api.openoffice.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] rules: http://api.openoffice.org/listrules.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] newsletTER: http://api.openoffice.org/NewsLetter/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]