Hi Alex, Alex Thurgood escribió:
That's what I was wondering when I was trawling through the API reference last night :-) Most of it appears to be undocumented, in the sense that what people like Drew, you and others are attempting to do doesn't appear to have been considered as a possibility when the documentation was drawn up, even though UNO appears to have all the bits and pieces necessary (so someone must have dreamt it up at some stage) :-))NOTE to Frank: where is all this documented?
A good question will be "what does it mean to be 'documented'?" IMHO: 1. it should be referenced in the IDL: seems obvious, but I remember when I got surprised founding out that there exists a css.awt.PopupMenu service, NOT documented in the API reference, but used in the source code [for example forms/source/component/ImageControl.cxxOImageControlControl::mousePressed]). Of course, on the other side, a one-line-description is not to document something.
2. it should be explained in the Developer's Guide how it can be implemented 3. an SDK example should be provide showing at least a minimum implementation If we consider the three requisites, there are black holes in OOo: just take a look at the embed module(http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/embed/module-ix.html),
there is indeed a powerful example in sdk/examples/java/EmbedDocument that may not be easy to understand just with the "help" of the IDL. Considering the DataSourceBrowser, the IDL seems really the work of Frank [was it?], i.e. no cryptic-one-line-description. Nevertheless, if you are not "initiated" into this: 1. the following is not as clear as desired: "Usually, you won't instantiate this service directly, instead you use the *dispatch* *mechanisms* of the application framework to load the URL .component:DB/DataSourceBrowser into an arbitrary frame. This should involve a *ContentLoader* service, which creates and initializes the browser." It should be stated that you can use XComponentLoader::loadComponentFromURL() passing ".component:DB/DataSourceBrowser" and a sequence of some required PropertyValue|s for initialization [this is was what I thought at first, but the "dispatch mechanisms" and the ContentLoader made me think that querying a dispatch object should be more proper; as so seemed to be as it is used in qa/qadevOOo/tests/java/mod/_dbaccess/OQueryDesign.java] 2. concerning these PropertyValue|s: in the description to XInitialization, only "Frame", "DataSourceName", "CommandType","Command" are explained. But how do we make the left tree disappear? "ShowTreeView", "ShowTreeViewButton", "ShowMenu" are not document; so we were lucky last night finding that it was used in
wizards/com/sun/star/wizards/db/CommandMetaData.java [and this morning in extensions/source/propctrlr/sqlcommanddesign.cxx SQLCommandDesigner::impl_doOpenDesignerFrame_nothrow()]Of course, an example would have helped: if you need to browse the C++ source code to find out how to write an OOo Basic macro, many people will give up at the first try.
And considering one of Drew's questions ("where are Base extensions
developers?"): if all these would be more "public" [i.e. more
documented, with more examples, etc.], sure more developers would be
interested in developing Base extensions, as all this shows that Base
can be highly "programmable" using the API, no more no less than the
other - more "famous"- modules.
Just some thoughts. Regards, Ariel. -- Ariel Constenla-Haile La Plata, Argentina [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ArielConstenlaHaile.com.ar/ooo/ "Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens - Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich härter." Nietzsche Götzendämmerung, Sprüche und Pfeile, 8. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
