Hal Vaughan wrote:
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
Remember, never do more work than you need to make.... You may be able
to use auto formatting to do the same thing. I have not used it.... I
thought that you could set formatting and everything. The idea would be
something like this:
You enter some specific text.
Press a key like Ctrl+F3
Based on the text that is present, new text and/or formatting is applied
I need to search around OOo a bit to figure it out, but it might be one
of these. (and I need to be somewhere soon so I can not look now).
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Writer_Guide/Using_AutoText
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Writer_Guide/Autoformatting
The bottom line is that you would simply need to create the entry and
then use it. This might be easier than the macro, perhaps not...
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
My Book: http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/oome.htm
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
See Also: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html
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