Hi Ian, Ian Laurenson wrote:
Hi J�rgen, Reply in-line.
On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 20:42, J�rgen Schmidt wrote:
Hi,
I'd like the idea as well and i will try to share some facts and thoughts here.
1. OO.org 2.0 comes with a smart integrated package manager (UI and command line support) which supports installation as well as removing of new UNO packages (real components as well as Basic or script libraries)
A great advancement it is to! It is the possibility of adding packages while OpenOffice.org is running that makes the concept of an add-on installer possible.
Sure and the add-on installer is already there but it needs to be extended with more functionality to install UNO packages for example from the web and detect new versions of alread installed packages ...
2. it offers also the export of UNO packages to extract UNO packages from an existing installation
As far as I can tell, the export of UNO packages provides a way of copying an installed UNO package to another location. From a brief test it doesn't include any changes to the installed files.
Why it should change the installed files?
3. UNO packages are described with a XML based package descriptor file
Could you let me know where the documentation for this file format can be found?
It is documented in the updated Developers Guide for OOo2.0
I think it would be a great start point and we should concentrate on this package manager and should define how we can improve and extend it with missing features (what ever make sense). The important thing from my point of view is that we have at the end only one kind of UNO packages. To many different formats will probably confuse the end users and nobody will know which installer is necessary for what kind of package.
I agree that there should be "only one kind of UNO packages"!
What do you think?
I'll try and explain the overall concept of what I am trying to achieve.
I have written a number of Openoffice.org macros which I have made available from: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/
The most common request / feedback that I receive is for an add-on installer along the lines of that provided by Firefox.
My interpretation of that request is that the installer needs to: * work from within OpenOffice.org * help people to find the addons that they require * install selected add-ons at a click of a button
agree
My first attempt at a user interface to try and meet this need is a wizard which is available from: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43532
The first step of that wizard is to download a file that contains information about all available add-ons and templates in "the system". It is the format of this file that the thread has been about. [By "the system" I am referring to a proposed central place for uploading OpenOffice.org add-ons and templates.]
Also on that first step is the possibility to download rating / review information.
The second step allows the user to see and select updates for add-ons and templates that they already have installed. For add-ons I think that this could be done by checking the names of installed UNO packages against the names of packages in the downloaded information file. I confess that I haven't checked the feasibility of this yet.
Also on this step it is possible to upload rating / review information to the central site.
Steps 3 - 6 are to help the user find their desired add-on or template.
Step 7 is to display dependency information (add-on 50 is dependent on add-on 12 so add-on 12 should be included).
On clicking install, all the selected add-ons and templates get downloaded and installed. The add-ons would all be standard UNO packages.
I have no preconceived preferences for the uploading of the files to the central site. Whether it be from within OpenOffice.org or through a web interface.
I think that some members of the OpenOffice.org community should have the responsibility for checking uploaded files for malicious content. The wizard has a check box for eliminating from the displayed list those add-ons or templates that haven't been checked.
good idea, the packages should definitely checked and QA'ed
I hope it is clear from the above, that I am not proposing a different format for UNO packages, but I am trying to find a way of helping users to find UNO package to meet their needs, and to do that may require an additional file with information about available UNO packages.
Yes of course and i like the idea. And i think the package manager is still the right start point or at least the right point to trigger a further UI to cover the online search, update and deployment of packages.
I would suggest that we use a different term instead of add-on, because add-on in OOo is a specialized UNO component providing some kind of UI integration. But there are a lot of more UNO packages (BASIC library, calc add-ins, ). I would prefer "OO.org extensions". GBut of course it's only a guess to minimize confusion.
- Juergen
Thanks, Ian
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