Re: [tdf-discuss] Macro Difficulties
Christian, You're right. My attempt to fool with options didn't work at first because I misidentified the file's character set, so I thought the csv in the filter name was significant and embarked on the quest to convert to CSV. Now that I have the right character set, everything works perfectly!!! I have put up a post on SAP's community network site to let others know it's possible to export from Business One to LibreOffice; hopefully it will help the switchers out there. I start my post off by publicly thanking you and Eduardo. If you'd like to see the post, it's at: http://scn.sap.com/thread/3325286 That post contains full instructions on how to modify AutoOpen.xls. But for those who want to cut right to the chase without reading it, here's the subroutine LibreOffice can use to open a tab-separated text file output by SAP Business One: Public Sub StarOpenTsvFile(tsvPath As String) Dim starDesktop As Object Dim url As String Dim doc As Object Dim parms(1) As New com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue parms(0).Name = FilterName parms(0).Value = Text - txt - csv (StarCalc) ' Name is incorrect, but required parms(1).Name = FilterOptions parms(1).Value = 9,,65535,1 ' Tab seps, no string delim, UTF-16 charset, begin at line 1 starDesktop = createUnoService(com.sun.star.frame.Desktop) url = ConvertToUrl(tsvPath) doc = starDesktop.loadComponentFromURL(url, _blank, 0, parms) End Sub Thanks again! -- Charles -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Scripting for LibreOffice
I'm with you on the UI design, Keith. The way software looks influences how people perceive its capability, and LO looks like something from the 90's. I like your design because it's attractive, yet leaves the menus in place for those users who can't get into using the ribbon. Now on the idea of removing VBA… I hate VBA, but I'd rather see LO become *more* compatible, rather than ditching it. I want LO to become the product people can switch to, but you close the door on switchers when you reduce compatibility. I can tell you that for sure because of my own recent difficulties fixing a macro so automated data export from SAP will work with LO. Step 1: Get the world to use LO as its Office standard. Step 2: Drop M$ Office compatibility. It's too early to leap into step 2 before we accomplish step 1. Reverse the order, and LO's growth stagnates. -- Charles -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Macro Difficulties
I'm making some progress. Here's my code so far: == Public Sub OpenExcelFile(excelPath As String) Attempt1: on error goto Fail1 ' snip The Excel method that doesn't work ' under LO, and which I don't own copyright to exit sub Fail1: resume Attempt2 Attempt2: dim starDesktop as object dim url as string dim doc as object dim dummy() ' Empty array of parameters starDesktop = createUnoService(com.sun.star.frame.Desktop) url = ConvertToUrl( ExcelPath ) doc = starDesktop.loadComponentFromURL( url, _blank, 0, dummy ) End Sub == The problem is, since the file output by SAP ends with the .txt extension, Calc opens the new file as a Writer document, not a spreadsheet. I think I need what is described in http://knowledgebase.progress.com/articles/Article/P147655 -- an extension that can wrap strings into the property values required by loadComponentFromUrl(), so I can fill the array of parameters in a way that tells LO it will be loading the text file into a spreadsheet. Does anyone out there happen to have experience with such an extension, or know how to get the open-source code for something similar? (The LO Extensions site has a CSV-opening extension, but I'd have to modify it to remove the UI, and there's no indication at all of how to get the source!) -- Charles -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Macro Difficulties
This is a story about the usability of LO BASIC and the documentation thereof. And also a plea for help. I'm trying to get LibreOffice to work with SAP Business One (hereafter called B1) in order to eliminate the need to pay for expensive licenses for Microsoft Excel. B1 has a toolbar button that's supposed to generate a spreadsheet for data viewed as a table onscreen. Unfortunately, instead of really creating a spreadsheet, B1 just dumps out a tab-separated text file and then opens a spreadsheet called AutoOpen.xls that in turn loads the text file into a new spreadsheet. This clunky way of doing things has the advantage that there's no worry about file formats. Whatever version of Excel you're running, it can open the text file. This method *could* work in LibreOffice too, but unfortunately the macro command used in AutoOpen.xls doesn't exist in LO BASIC. The command is Workbooks.OpenText I'm not sure if the problem is that OpenText doesn't exist, or if there is no Workbooks object to begin with. The documentation on LO BASIC is so sparse that I can't find anything about opening spreadsheets. The LO help file promises documentation at OpenOffice.org; but clicking that link takes me instead to https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/BASIC_Guide, which is a placeholder page containing only a link to another website--which doesn't respond. (By the way, the help file does document an Open command, but that command is used to open simple data files to be processed and closed by the script. It doesn't cause LO to open a document in the UI.) After finding nothing documented, I enabled macro recording, began recording a macro, and used File Open to open the text file/spreadsheet myself. Obviously, I was hoping to then examine the macro to learn what objects and functions LO uses to open files. But opening a new file causes macro recording to end without a comment, warning, or error…and without saving anything of the macro in progress. Can anyone give me clues to creating a macro which can open a spreadsheet? -- Charles -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Getting Action
Hi, all. A few months ago, we had some good discussion about improvements to Writer's notes feature, in a thread titled Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges As a result, Chrisoph added a feature request-- https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38244 --and a place to vote for it-- http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement#Bug_38244_-_Enable_attaching_comments_to_document_text_ranges_in_Writer I'd appreciate if anyone who hasn't already done so would go vote for it, but the real reason I'm writing today is to ask for other ideas about how to encourage implementation of these enhancements. Would a bug bounty work well for this type of feature? I'm nervous about doing that, because I wouldn't want to shell out money for features that don't actually work or don't end up making into the real release. I'm going to have to do more editing in the future, and Microsoft Word 2011 for the Mac is just a disaster with regard to comments, so I'm dying to have a version of LO that could replace it. -- Charles LEGALESE: PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Re: Support for Versions, Full-Screen, and Resume in OS X Lion
I was wrong about something in my earlier email. I suggested that these features, including Resume, would be nice to have someday in LO, after other important bugs and features are dealt with. I take it back about Resume, because making that work would require supporting Autosave -- a feature which I am afraid of. It is my current understanding that Versions only works on HFS+ volumes, so if an app which autosaves is writing to a FAT32 volume, for instance, your document gets overwritten every few minutes with the latest changes, whether you want to keep them or not. Your old versions are simply lost. Can anyone confirm? Even when the system works as advertised when saving to HFS+, if you email a document to a friend for revisions or carry it around on another storage medium (for example to work on at school), what you get back will contain only the single, latest version. What do you do with it? (a) Throw away all the old versions by overwriting the original file? (b) Remember to change the new file's name and now maintain multiple files? (c) Port the changes so you have the newest data but can still believe you could go back to the old? Keeping multiple files with different names is no different than what we do now to support separate versions of the same file, but the point is, Lion encourages the bad option (a) by making saving a no-brainer process. It trains users NOT to think about what happens to maintain file data, because saving and autosaving are supposed to always be safe because you can always go back...a premise that simply is not true. I have only lost data a few times due to forgetting to save a document, mostly because of buggy apps which will close without alerting the user about unsaved data. I'm not afraid of forgetting to save. I'm much more afraid of making inadvertent changes that then get autosaved, or of depending upon an old version to be there as promised, but finding it lost. I hope LO will avoid ever supporting Autosave, and therefore Resume. -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Re: Support for Versions, Full-Screen, and Resume in OS X Lion
On 2011-09-08 16:00, Karl wrote: What I know from other platforms (Solaris/Linux) is that autosave saves into a hidden file in the background not destroying your last saved document. Just in case of an unforeseen shutdown of the system, a power outage or a crash of the whole soffice suite, X11 system or OS these hidden files remain in background. Restarting soffice next time finds all the leftover hidden files from last time and offers to recover them. Karl, You and I are talking about two different things that have unfortunately been given the same name. You're thinking of the familiar feature which automatically backs up what you're working on to another backup file. I agree with you. LO must keep that feature! I'm talking of OS X Lion's new trick which is *almost* the same thing, but instead of saving to another off-stage file, it saves to the actual document file you're working on -- before you've decided whether you want to keep the changes. Maybe you don't realize you've even made changes. Old data gets backed up to the off-stage file...unless the document is stored in the wrong place, in which case the old, good data just gets thrown away. Check out this article that just popped up today: http://tidbits.com/article/12483 -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Support for Versions, Full-Screen, and Resume in OS X Lion
My two cents on this issue is that Versions and Resume are nice features that will have to be supported one day, but I'd rather see Commenting and Track Changes fixed first because they are needed right now. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38244 I'm sure everyone else out there could name a pet issue that they'd like to see taken care of before making document save procedures work differently depending upon a user's OS. Full Screen is another matter. As long as LO relies on palettes (tool windows), it doesn't seem practical to have a full screen mode. If the glorious day ever arrives that LO can snap palettes together and stick them to the side of the window, a la recent versions of Photoshop, then full screening the app will make more sense -- you'll be able to have full functionality in a full-screen window. But if we're not going to fix the UI's reliance on palettes, then full screen mode will only be useful as a distraction free mode as offered by WriteRoom or Scrivener. -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges
M. Henri Day wrote: Charles wrote: Now that we can find Bug 38244 under the section for voting on Enhancements to Writer, I'd like to ask everyone with an interest in this issue to please sign up and add your vote. If you use Track Changes to work with an editor, you probably need this feature! :-) Charles, I'm happy to hear that you were able to edit the page, but less happy that, despite signing in, I couldn't find any way to register my vote. A step-by-step for the intellectually challenged ?... Henri Henri, No problem, and you're not intellectually challenged at all: Their system is cumbersome. 1. Create an account for yourself at wiki.documentfoundation.org 2. Respond to the verification email 3. Wait some number of hours for your authorization to fully filter through their system. 4. Go to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement and log in. 5. Find the link for Bug 38244 in the Contents box and click on it. 6. When that bug appears onscreen, look to the far right for a link labeled [edit] and click it. 7. Find the line that says '''I disagree with that request ''' and right ABOVE it, add a new line that begins with a hash mark (#). Obviously, a vote below that line would count against us, so be careful! 8. Type your message. 9. Feel good that you have done something for all of humanity by helping to make Libre Office a stronger competitor to Microsoft Word. (LOL!) -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges
Cristoph wrote: What I'm currently unsure about - how to proceed. Although I'm not that convinced about voting, maybe it should be added to: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement I did it! The wiki finally let me edit the page! Now that we can find Bug 38244 under the section for voting on Enhancements to Writer, I'd like to ask everyone with an interest in this issue to please sign up and add your vote. If you use Track Changes to work with an editor, you probably need this feature! :-) -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges
Cristoph wrote: What I'm currently unsure about - how to proceed. Although I'm not that convinced about voting, maybe it should be added to: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement Could you do that, please? Well, I tried to. I made an account, got my email confirmed, closed and reopened my browser -- but no matter what, I still can't edit that Wiki page. It looks like the page is protected so that only Administrators may make changes. -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges
Thank you for everyone who commented on this. I'm actually getting a little misty because you liked my idea... Cristoph, heck, yes! Your proposal is perfect. If only, if only we had that, I could delete Word off my Mac and have a party to celebrate. Will you be posting the bug proposal as Thorsten suggested, or should I learn how to do it? -- Charles . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Easier Graphic Insertion
Hi, everyone! I'm new here. I have a feedback to offer, and I was told this is the place to do it. In my day job as an engineer, I currently use Microsoft Word to write technical documentation which includes screenshot images. I'd like to break the Word habit. I understand that when creating publications like newsletters, some people may need to place graphics in a particular spot on the page and have text flow around it. However, I think most business and casual users -- and certainly someone like myself who produces technical documentation -- need to have the graphics flow along with the text. In other words, we need the graphics to be anchored as a character. I know LibreOffice can do this, but it is not the default behavior, and to fix it after inserting a picture involves a lot of work: The initial paste is almost guaranteed to put the anchor in the wrong place, and even after moving it, you typically have to go into the Picture dialog box to fix Position attributes. Microsoft Word and the Macintosh word processors I'm familiar with insert pictures anchored as a character by default. Though many other things are disastrously wrong with Microsoft Word, I have to admit that they do picture insertion just right. With LibreOffice, adding a screenshot is quite a frustrating battle for me. If Insert Pictures Anchored as Characters were only an option turned ON by default, LibreOffice would be much more usable for me, and I suspect many others, at work. PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Enhancement Request: Comment Ranges
As a fiction writer, I currently must use Microsoft Word on the Mac to exchange documents with editors, because Track Changes and commenting features are a necessity. In Microsoft Word, an editor can mark a section of text and add a comment like, This is redundant. Recommend deletion. When I click on the highlighted range, I see the comment and can make my decision accordingly. In LibreOffice, it appears that comments always have zero length. If I were to open my editor's document and encounter This is redundant. Recommend deletion, I would have to guess at which range of text she meant to point out. We've all heard smarmy people say, You need to add feature X or I won't use your stupid program. That's not where I'm coming from. But I do feel that the lack of comment ranges which appear as highlighted text in the document is a serious deficiency that will hinder LibreOffice's adoption by people who work with editors and publishers. This is a great shame because the tracking and commenting features otherwise work much better in LibreOffice than in Word. I cannot express how much I hate Word for all the bugs in its commenting features -- bugs which have existed and gone unaddressed through at least three versions now. Truly, I beg you to add comment ranges in LibreOffice so I can stop using Word altogether for writing. . PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: The information contained in this electronic transmission, and any documents attached hereto, may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify the sender and delete the electronic message. Any disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of the information received in error is strictly prohibited. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
