"G. Roderick Singleton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>> Maybe it's me, but I find the macro >> language impossible, much more difficult than vba. > > BASIC is pretty much BASIC no matter which flavour. If you have > specific problems let us know. > > But the OOo API is very different to Word's; and the documentation and IDE are quite phenomenally worse. It took me, when I first started with Word, about five minutes to write (well, actually, record) a macro that transposes two characters. It took 48 hours to do the same in OOo. This was before the days of the macro recorder, so I assume it would be easier now. But there is still plenty that the macro recorder will not do, and for that there's no substitute for hand coding. To take one really zimple example: if you're writing a macro in Word, there are tooltips, syntax completion, and comprehensive help, all available at most a keystroke away. Quite a lot of it is automatically available as you type. You can't get any of that in OOo straight out of the box. If you know where to look, you can find, and install, the excellent Xray macro, whcih, in conjunction with the SDK -- another optional download -- will give you some help. But it's not intuitive; it's not easy, and it's not quick. As for the business of writing add-ins, that anyone can install and then get additional toolbars, menus, and so on, with the new functions -- in the five years I have used OOo, I have only come across one, the truly remarkable Thessalonica, which actually works. There are innumerable macros like that for Word, and that was true back when it was WinWord 2. I have wasted a little time trying to write a blogging toolbar. It doesn't work. I have no idea whatsoever why it doesn't. I don't know anyone who can tell me -- and, yes, I have asked i all the sensible places. There is a vicious circle here. OOo has too few developers making it easier to use. This is there are too few tools for them. That is because there are too few developers. -- Andrew Brown The email in the header does not work. Contact details and possibly useful macros from http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/bugs/oo_macros.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
