On Wednesday 02 July 2008, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote: > I wondered if it was the same Hal :-)
Yes. Originally my plans were to do an application completely in OOBasic, but that never worked out because I needed some functions that weren't available, such as reliable (and preferably encrypted) file transfer. I ended up having to learn Java and writing my app in Java. It works fine and in the first 18 months that version 1.0 was running I had something like 4-5 bug reports, including cases like a client who had troubles because my program would write out files that were later unreadable by OOo, but it turned out it was because he had bad sectors on his drive. (The files I created were okay -- just corrupted by a bad drive!) I remember at the time I was working on a way to create macros that would go with the document and hoped to write that up, but it looks like there's a better setup now. With this small project, I won't be doing anything complex. It's to help me with writing screenplays. I need 4 main macros that will change the margins to specific settings, one to ask me the script title and from there create a new directory in my writing directory for it and to put that title in the headers and title page. This next part may be off because it's been so long since I've been able to sit down and write in an actual word processor, so I don't remember if OOo uses the ALT key for any commands, but let's assume it doesn't for now. I'll have one other main macro. When I call it, it'll ask me for a phrase, which will usually be a character's name, then it'll ask me to press a key (or enter a key in a dialog box). Then it'll create a macro (hopefully for that document only) that will, within that macro, call up one of the margin setting macros, then type the name (or phrase) I entered in the dialog box. It'll also link that macro to the key I specified when used with the ALT key. I had a system like that on Word Perfect that worked just fine for me. I'm lucky, I write my screenplays for me and for the film company I'll be starting soon. I don't have to worry about many of the rules of screenplay formatting that get in the way and I prefer not to use programs designed for screenwriters -- I like doing all my writing in one program. All I need to customize it is to be able to set up the macros I just mentioned. I just wanted to get an idea of whether anyone know if it was possible to do the things I wasn't sure of before researching it. If I got a "No," then I knew it wouldn't be worth the hours or days it could take to go through the API and experiment. I can post the results when I'm done, if it'll help. Hal --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
