Mathias Bauer wrote:
In my experience, (1) coding the extension was easy, but (2) the documentatin was inpenetrable and (3) I couldn't figure out how to deploy them. There just wasn't a simple system for that.
Sorry, but the SDK documentation clearly describes how you can do that with a simple command line tool (pkgchk.exe or in OOo2.0 also unopkg.exe).
That is a huge deployment barrier. Do you seriously expect me to make an add-on and tell my mom, uncle, or my non-geek friend to run pkgchk? Think about that for a second.
Second, I found the documentation anything but clear. I'm sure that *you* think it's the clearest thing in the world. But I sure didn't. And I wasted a lot of time talking to people trying to find a good way to have a stupid little macro installed, and I did not manage it.
Telling me that the documentation is easy does not make it easy for me. It just frustrates me.
But OOo 2.0 *will* have such a dialog. Check out one of the 1.9.x milestones, you will find the dialog under "Tools-Package Manager".
I'll look into it.
I found XUL much easier. I actually enjoyed writing a GUI with XUL.
Because you know it.
No, look, one of the things I liked most about it was how quickly I could learn it. In spite of very poor documentation, by just guessing I was able to write an interesting GUI in a very short time.
Of course, if you know something about HTML, CSS, DOM etc. it is easier to build your application on top of that knowledge while you usually don't know much about OOo's internal structure - but hey, isn't that an unfair comparison? ;-)
Actually... isn't it a good language feature that it builds upon previous concepts that a lot of people know very well? Every programmer I know is versed in HTML and CSS.
Suppose we only had instructins in Swahili. Couldn't you argue that Swahili is just as good as English for instructions and I only find English easier because I already know it?
I wrote some useful macros in about that time (readability analyzer, virtual keyboard) but couldn't manage to make them easy to install. So I dropped the projects.
Perhaps you didn't ask? Perhaps you asked, people told you about pkgchk.exe and you didn't follow the advice? I don't know, but it *is* easy.
I DID ask, I looked everywhere I could, I spent hours on IRC, I emailed several different people, I spent weeks on it. Please don't act like I didn't do anything.
Telling me it's easy doesn't make it easy. I am telling you that I couldn't do it after a sincere effort. I make no claim what the reason is. Maybe the website didn't help me find the documentation I needed. Maybe I did find the documentation, but it was so massive I couldn't find the portion I needed. Perhaps I did find the portion I needed but the documentation didn't make sense. Perhaps I lacked examples I could build on. Perhaps they were just very deeply hidden so I couldn't find them.
All of the above are potential reasons. But the fact remains that I made a sincere and prolonged effort and failed. And you are not doing anyone a favour by assuming that I didn't try. And I take issue with that assumption.
Sincerely, Daniel.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
