On 26.03.2012 17:27, Rob Weir wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Michał Jaskurzyński
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> What do you think about this projekt:
>> http://wi.wu.ac.at/rgf/diplomarbeiten/#bakk_201203a ? Is it
>> sufficient? Should ODF Command Line Tools be closed or should use this
>> bachelor paper and extend it?
> Hi Michal, I have not had time to read the entire paper, but I did browse
> through it, especially the code samples.
>
> It looks like it is a REXX wrapper of the ODF Toolkit, with an abstraction
> level similar to our Simple API.
No, BSF4ooRexx is a wrapper for Java (!), hence the shown ooRexx programs are
interacting directly
with the Java APIs, ie. the ODF Toolkit itself. However the semantics are such
of the dynamically
typed, caseless scripting language ooRexx. As a result the same programs run
unchanged not only on
Linux, but also on Windows and/or MacOSX.
In addition (not shown in the Bachelor thesis) there is special support for
interfacing ooRexx
directly with OpenOffice in the form of an oxt-extension. This special support
brings forward the
semantics of dynamic types and caselessness to the UNO framework on which
OpenOffice is based. (I am
not aware of a comparable Perl module, Python is currently restricted to the
Python shipped with
OpenOffice.)
The overall aim is to make it easy for professional, but also non-professional
programmers
("enduser" resp. "business" programmers) to interact with Java and/or
OpenOffice easily in a
platform independent manner.
Of course, like any other language, one could apply the language ooRexx for
creating filters that
read from stdin and write to stdout (to allow the creation of pipes).
Having said that, still the following applies: there are many ways (and
languages) to approach the
task at hand, and being a pragmatic person, any approach that solves the
problem at hand
sufficiently is probably fine ...
---rony
P.S.: Ad "dynamically typed" and "caselessness": if you look at the few
nutshell examples of the
Bachelor paper, the Rexx programs do not have any type declarations which
eases/simplifies coding
remarkably for (especially for enduser/business) programmers; also,
caselessness means that no
runtime errors are created if the names of methods and fields are not spelled
out with the correct
case, e.g. "odfTable~getCellByPosition(0,4)" has the same effect as "odfTable ~
GETcellBYpositioN('0', 4)".
Making this behaviour available to (enduser/business) programmers is motivated
by the
"human-oriented" paradigm of the Rexx language philosophy and the speed of
modern computers, which
allow for implementations of such principles with a responsiveness to the user,
that is totally
acceptable for them. It eases coding for professional programmers alike
(especially for creating
scripts).
