On Wed, 2006-06-12 at 03:16 -0600, Alexandro Colorado wrote: > Poor documentation and a very complex API has hurt us in the past,
Indeed. Those are the main things that kept me from doing as much coding
work as I had hoped. These problems are not unique to PyUNO btw. In
particular, the complexity of UNO affects everything, including
StarBasic.
> So jargon aside I think a good campaing on contacitng SIG, User Groups and
> on-line communities might be a great way to lure to the developer
> communities out there. This could also be a framework to go to other
> languajes such as C++, Java, Mono etc.
My more recent experience at the OD Fellowship tells me that many
developers are already interested in using OOo as a development platform
but don't because the API is too complex and poorly documented.
A particularly popular use of OOo is for converting documents.
Especially for producing PDF documents. For example, you could use XML
tools to produce an OpenDocument file and use OOo to turn that into PDF.
However, this could just be a reflection that the people active in the
Fellowship are likely to be interested in file formats for some reason
or another.
I think OOo would benefit more from a simple API and documentation. This
isn't quite as hard as it sounds, but it sure is a lot of work. Create a
suite of functions for common actions. For example, just writing text to
the screen takes like 6 lines. Write a simple Print() function that
hides those 6 lines of code.
A good idea would be to write a FileConvert() function, that converts
files between different formats. It could have a syntax like:
FileConvert("mydocument.doc","mydocument.pdf");
That seems to be a popular use for OOo and one that is normally a very
complex operation. This sort of thing would make OOo a more attractive
platform.
If anyone is interested in doing this, I can put you in touch with some
outside developers who currently use OOo as a development platform, or
would like to do so in the future.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
"I AM in shape. Round IS a shape."
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