Hi, I missed that posting, so I'm a little late.
Anders Johansen wrote: > * I spent about two man-months trying to puzzle out how to interface > with OOo from Delphi or BCB. Conclusion: "If it works, the > documentations is out of date, and nobody who is talking knows how." > I'm not stupid, I'm not inexperienced, and I have figured this stuff > out for several other products before, but OOo for some reason was > just impenetrable. COM/OLE support was at least back then obscure and/ > or broken, and badly documented, and direct support for Delphi or BCB > was the same, even more so. I could be wrong, but I really tried my > best to find out, and asked around quite a bit. Sorry, that's just plain wrong. The DevGuide clearly describes how OOo can be used from OLE Automation. It might be a bit on the short side, but it's definitely not outdated. By asking on the mailing lists or the oooforum the possible gaps can be filled usually and development.openoffice.org (http://development.openoffice.org/#OLE) also offers a starting point. > * I spent more than $2.000 on having some consultants claim "Oh, > we'll do it", waited for half a year, and then they went "...err, we > couldn't figure it out after all". Those were the ones everybody in > the Danish OOo community pointed me to. > > * I asked for help in the relevant mailinglists several times. No > takers. None. Sank like a stone. Well, if you ask the wrong people or the wrong mailing lists you might not get the right answers - that's life. Maybe it's not easy enough to find the right list - point taken, we could enhance the visibility of this list for ISVs that are looking for help with possible integrations. Maybe a "welcome" page for ISVs helps them find the way quicker. development.openoffice.org is a start, but it needs some cleanup. > Now I am not blaming you guys in the OOo community: Your time is > valuable, and you have every right to not pick up the glove, and > accept the challenge. But my time is valuable too, and this is > probably the last time I am going to attempt this. If nobody steps > up, or points to an outfit that will do this for money (and I will > pay well), me supporting OOo is probably out for good, as this will > be the second time I have invested non-trivial resources in this with > nothing to show for it... and my answer to anybody that asks will > probably be to forward them this email, or something very similar to it. I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience - perhaps there's a dilemma for OOo: because the OOo community is built around freedom, openness and volunteering there is only little demand for professional paid work and so only few people can work on it for a living and only a few finally do this. This has its Pros and Cons and in your case obviously the Cons predominate. > I want to make it absolutely clear that I /do/ appreciate that you > guys (Hi Mathias) helped me a bit down the road. I am trying to pay > you the curticy of explaining what my motivation and reasoning is, > and to let you guys - the OOo community - know what is going on here. > I know that I am not the centre of the world, and that my problem is > probably not the biggest barrier to OOo adoption, but is /is/ real, > and I bet other SMV's have the same problems I have... Well, I know several ISVs that successfully ported their solutions to OOo or especially created new ones for it. I still hope that you can find someone for help. Perhaps again we can help people like you by creating a "job exchange" page where ISVs can ask for OOo developers and the developers can look for jobs? Just an idea... Best regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer - OpenOffice.org Application Framework Project Lead Please reply to the list only, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a spam sink. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
