Hi Jim,
...
P.S.: There exists a version ASF BSF 3.0 (currently in beta), which
is a total rewrite from scratch matching Java's 6 "javax.script".
However, that package can be deployed on Java 1.3 and up. This means
that in principle it would be possible to add Java 6 style scripting
to OOo, if OOo was taking advantage of BSF 3.0, even if using earlier
versions of Java! If interested, we could talk about this on another
thread.
That (supporting any JSR-223 Java Script API engine) is what IFCX
Wings and GroovyForOpenOffice are doing. I've proposed (in my OOo
Community Improvement Program entry) that OOo extend the Scripting
Framework along those lines.
Note that JSR-223 (javax.script) does not require Java 6, it works
fine with Java 5 which is all that IFCX Wings & G4OO require. Java 6
is fine of course, but pre-Java 5 doesn't work because unfortunately
they used generics in the API.
That is probably linked to the class file format, rather than Generics.
I'm also interested in working out IDE integration so that OOo macros
in these JVM-based languages can be editted and debugged directly in
OOo without having to set up an external client/server style project.
So count me interested!
Where do we find your BSF-based work?
Here are the links:
* Apache Software Foundation, Project "Jakarta" (originally meant to
umbrella all Apache Java projects, in the meantime quite a few ASF
Java projects have become top level projects, having their own
domain), Subproject "Bean Scripting Framework (BSF)":
o <http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/>
* BSF 3.0, a.k.a. "Java 6" scripting framework:
o <http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/bsfnews.html>
o Being employed in the Apache Harmony project, which is the
opensource ASF Java implementation
If one uses BSF 3.0 then one can also use JSR-223 (a.k.a. "Java 6
scripting") scripting engines, as long as their Java level does not
exceed the installed Java runtime environment.
---
Ad BSF 2.4: this is the "classic" scripting framework, originating in
Java 1.1 (!), nowadays using Java 1.3 as its base level. There are quite
a few scriping engines available for it, from Javascript (Rhino) via
XSLT (sic! using Xalan) to Prolog (JLog), cf. the BSF homepage. Next
developments that I intend do do will be a scripting engine that will
incorporate JSR-223 scripting engines into the BSF 2.4 framework. Also,
another idea would be to create a JSR-223 bridge to BSF 2.x (to make
also those scripting engines available, that do not exist for JSR-223).
---rony
