Hi Daniel Darabos,
Please note I answer the mail in dev@dba.openoffice.org, which really is
the more appropriate for this kind of discussion. Please also stick to
this list - doing all this in private communication sounds like a waste
of knowledge to me. Thanks.
Darabos Dániel wrote:
Dear Ocke,
I am a developer from MultiRacio Ltd., responsible for the
"EuroOffice" brand of extensions. Seeing how useful and popular Sun
Report Builder is, we had the idea of bringing the functionality of
EuroOffice Map Chart to it. It would allow adding automatically
generated map charts to your reports.
To read about EuroOffice Map Chart here is its page in the Extension
Repository:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice-mapchart
We now have a prototype of this integration working.
That sounds really cool. :-)
Unfortunately for this to work, I had to modify two files in the Java
source of Sun Report Builder.
In SOReportJobFactory.java I made m_cmpCtx
public static so I could get a UNO ServiceManager in
ImageProducer.java. In ImageProducer.java if the image data is a
string and starts with "map:" I instanciate
com.multiracio.MapChartProfessional, give it the image data and use
the image returned by EuroOffice Map Chart in the document.
If you would like to open up Sun Report Builder to extensions, I think
this could be a very effortless approach. There would just need to be
a registry for Sun Report Builder plugins, and they could register for
handling different "protocols" (such as
"com.multiracio.MapChartProfessional" for "map:").
The prototype of EuroOffice Map Chart Professional now works by adding
a new menu item to the "Insert" menu of
com.sun.star.report.ReportDefinition (through the
UIConfigurationManager), which opens a dialog, and creates an image
object with a data field that is a formula expression that will
evaluate to a string starting with "map:" and containing possibly
different data for different instances (such as in the example).
I don't know if it is a good idea to introduce a new URL for "map:". A
better approach for me would be to use a function like
"rpt:MapChartProfessional(args)". In cws rptchart02 I introduced two new
functions "Author" and "Title" which can be used as template. all what need
to be done is add the service factory to the configuration like it was done
for Author.
If you have any questions about using it, let me know. It is supposed
to be installed after the modified Sun Report Builder is installed, so
that the menu is correctly extended.
Now we are sure all this would be a nice feature for users. But we are
not sure about how to go ahead with providing this solution.
The easiest way for me is that you submit a patch file. I'll verify and
check before I integrate it into the source code. ;-)
The ideal scenario for us would be if a cleaned up version of this
extensibility feature could be integrated into future versions of Sun
Report Builder. This would also open up the way for other Sun Report
Builder extensions, a very useful example of which would be an
integration of regular charts.
That is done in cws rptchart02. You can use charts as you can in for example
in OOoCalc.
I would be more than glad to cooperate
with you on making this happen. (Of course my understanding of the Sun
Report Builder sources is a bit limited, but with your guidance I
could probably write most of the code.)
Feel free to ask any question which come to your mind. I'll try my best to
answer them ;-)
We could also possibly provide a patched variant of the newest Sun
Report Builder versions for download for users of EuroOffice Map
Chart, but this would be quite an awkward solution, and I am not even
sure about its legal circumstances, so I would like to avoid this
approach.
+1
Please let me know what you think about all this! I am looking forward
to your answer.
Really great.
Best regards,
Ocke
Best regards,
Daniel Darabos
--
Ocke Janssen Tel: +49 40 23646 661, x66661
Dipl. Inf(FH) Fax: +49 40 23646 550
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