Language Independent Office Scripting Framework

Project Owners: John Rice,Noel Power

There are currently two ways for users and developers to add functionality to OpenOffice.org, namely macros and UNO components.

Macros are a set of instructions which OpenOffice.org can interpret at runtime to carry out a specific set of tasks in OpenOffice.org. Users can create a macro by recording a number of tasks in OpenOffice.org, save this set of tasks as a macro and then bind this macro to a menu or keypress. The macro is run by hitting the bound menu or key. Advanced users can write their own StarBasic macros in an embedded StarBasic IDE if they wish.

UNO components are compiled C++ or Java components, which a developer can write using the UNO API to access and manipulate OpenOffice.org. The component is written in an external IDE in C++ or Java (or any language with a supported UNO bridge). The end user needs to install any new component in their OpenOffice.org to make use of this new functionality. UNO component development is supported by the ODK.

The Scripting Framework aims to strike a balance between these two approaches of customizing OpenOffice.org. The framework will allow scripts to be written in a variety of languages, deployed into OpenOffice.org installations or documents, loaded at runtime and executed in OpenOffice.org. The framework will allow any number of different scripting languages to be plugged into OpenOffice.org for which there is an UNO bridge. Our focus will be to support languages with a Java implementation, but the framework can be made to work with any scripting langauge with a supported UNO bridge such as the UNO Python bridge. In this way users and developers will be able to write scripts in any supported scripting language to manipulate OpenOffice.org.

Name	Description
Documentation for the Early Developer Release (Version 0.3)
Features	Features of the Early Developer Release
Download	Download the Office Scripting Framework (2 MB). Refer to the install section for installation guidelines. Updated to work with OpenOffice.org1.1rc1 and later
Install	Installation Guide for the Office Scripting Framework
Uninstall	Guide for Uninstalling the Office Scripting Framework
Script User Guides	General User Guide
Script User Guides	Utility Scripts contributed by the OpenOffice.org community
Script Developer Guides	Writing Scripts in BeanShell, JavaScript and Java
	Developing Scripts in NetBeans
	Developing Scripts on the command line
FAQ	Frequently Asked Questions for the Office Scripting Framework
Release Notes	Release Notes
Test	Guidelines for testing the Framework – Description of basic sanity tests (smoke tests) for the framework.
What's Next	Upcoming features in future releases of the Office Scripting Framework

Version	Released
Previous Releases
Early Developer Release Version 0.2	April 2003
Early Developer Release Version 0.1	November 2002

Mailing List	Installation, User or Developer queries on the Office Scripting Framework
Issues	Issues found in the Office Scripting Framework should be logged in Issuezilla component: framework subcomponent: scripting

Last Modified: Mon Sep 15 16:59:44 BST 2003