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Author: Olivier Hallot

Introducing the ScriptForge Basic Libraries

The arrival of the ScriptForge Libraries will greatly help macro programming in LibreOffice.

By Jean-Pierre Ledure

What is ScriptForge?

ScriptForge libraries are an extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from user Basic macros. Users familiar with other BASIC macro variants often face hard times to dig into the extensive LibreOffice Application Programming Interface even for the simplest operations. By collecting most-demanded document operations in a set of easy to use, easy to read routines, users can now program document macros with much less hassle and get quicker results.

ScriptForge abundant methods are organized in reusable modules that cleanly isolate Basic programming language constructs from ODF document content accesses and user interface(UI) features.

What is in ScriptForge?

ScriptForge libraries hold:

  • an extensive set of primitives for array handling, including sorts, set operations and interfaces with csv files
  • an extensive set of primitives for string handling, including replacements, regular expressions, encodings, hashing and localization
  • a Dictionary mapping class
  • a class to help internationalize Basic scripts
  • a coherent error handling for both user and ScriptForge scripts
  • complete FileSystem and TextStream classes for file and directory handling, plus text files read & write
  • detailed context information: platform, operating system, directories, …
  • interconnection between Basic and Python modules

Document-based and UI ready-made examples help overcome LibreOffice Application Programming Interface (API) steep learning curve. They offer easy access to and management of actual windows and documents, with specific modules for automation on Calc sheets, cells and ranges of cells, management of dialogs and their controls and access to data contained in databases, among many other services.

The described features are invoked from user scripts as “Services” that can be extended. ScriptForge libraries build up an extensible ecosystem that combines with standard libraries, libraries published as extensions or libraries distributed as enterprise extensions.

What else?

ScriptForge libraries documentation is undergoing review and translation and will be available from LibreOffice 7.2 onwards, but you can use ScriptForge services and scripts right away with LibreOffice release 7.1. A glimpse of the ScriptForge documentation is already online at this Help page.

A lecture on ScriptForge was delivered by Jean-Pierre Ledure at the LibreOffice 2020 conference.  A PDF presentation document is available for download.

ScriptForge is a community contribution by Jean-Pierre Ledure, Alain Romedenne and Rafael Lima.

Scripting LibreOffice macros with Basic just got easier with ScriptForge libraries!

The round-the-world trip to fix a bug

A little story: The beauty of planet-wide collaborative work in LibreOffice

Mrs. Vera Cavalcante (@veracape), from Brazil, a long-time contributor for the Portuguese documentation on LibreOffice, was reviewing the translation of the Calc Guide and double-checking the translated text, with respect to the current user interface and the Help pages. Vera noticed that the Help pages on conditional formatting were not correct any more, and reported in the Brazilian team Telegram group (Bugzilla is still very hard for non-native English speakers).

The message hit Olivier Hallot (@ohallot) from the LibreOffice documentation coordination team (and Brazilian community member), who reported the bug in LibreOffice’s Bugzilla, for later fixing. LibreOffice’s outstanding quality depends on good quality and numerous errors reports to be submitted properly, for improvements and fixing defects. There is no point leaving a bug unreported.

The topic was of special interest of Roman Kuznetsov (@kompilainenn) from Russia, who already wrote documentation about conditional formatting. Roman wrote the fix, and submitted a patch in Gerrit (the service that controls the code corrections in LibreOffice)…

…and Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (@fitojb) from Mexico reviewed and approved the patch for merging in the main Help code.

End result: LibreOffice’s Help page fixed!

The LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0 Just Arrived!

The LibreOffice Documentation Team is happy to announce the availability of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0, the most comprehensive guide for the Calc module, updated to the latest version of LibreOffice.

The Guide is available in PDF format and contains 545 pages, covering all basic and advanced features of the spreadsheet module of LibreOffice, and is a must-read book for exploiting the maximum of LibreOffice Calc.

(more…)

LibreOffice Math Guide 7.0 is Published

The Math Guide 7.0 is the first book published based on LibreOffice 7.0

The Documentation Team is happy to announce the publication of the Math Guide 7.0, the latest update of the guide based on the recently released LibreOffice 7.0, the best open source office suite ever.

Math Guide 7.0

The effort was mostly carried by Rafael Lima and reviewed by Jean H. Weber. The new guide covers were designed by Rizal Muttaqin and Drew Jensen. The final publication was carried by Olivier Hallot.

“I work as a university professor in Brazil and I often write papers and prepare presentations that involve mathematical models and notation, and for that I’ve been using LibreOffice Math for over a year. When I read about the Documentation Team on a TDF blog post and learned that the Math Guide needed a volunteer, I felt it was my chance to contribute back to the LibreOffice project” said Rafael Lima, leader of the project. “The experience was seamless and it has been a pleasure working with the Documentation Team. Now I am looking forward to continuing contributing to the project, not only with the Math Guide, but also in other publications developed and maintained by the team.” he added.

Rafael Lima

The new Math Guide is available at the documentation website at https://documentation.libreoffice.org and the source files are on the LibreOffice wiki at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Math_Guide

Happy documenting!

Documentation Team Status

By Dave Barton

In recent times, the very small LibreOffice Documentation Team has been making real progress in revising and updating the user guides:

Release 6.4

Release 7.0
Calc Guide Published Work in progress
Base Guide Published Work in progress
Draw Guide Published Work in progress
Impress Guide Skipped Work in progress
Math Guide Published Awaiting volunteer contributors
Writer Guide Published Awaiting volunteer contributors
Getting Started Guide Published Awaiting volunteer contributors

While this progress in shortened documentation development time is fairly good, it can be substantially improved by having more contributors on the team.

It would be terrific if all contributors were a skilled technical writers, but in reality anyone with a reasonable command of the English language and an eye for detail can make a valuable contribution. No contributor is expected to rewrite entire guide books, although some of our most experienced, long term contributors do exactly that. In fact nothing is expected or demanded of any contributor, other than to let other members of the team know what they what they have chosen to work on.

In some cases, that might be to update a chapter of an existing guide, or reviewing the work of another team member. Reviewing can take the form of proof reading, or researching the accuracy of the guide information in relation to the software’s actual operation. By identifying yourself as a Docs Team contributor does not mean you are making any permanent or long term commitment – many contributors come and go over long periods according to the demands of their “real” life.

It can be seen in the documentation status above there are at least three guides where the input of new contributors would be very welcome. If you are interested in contributing these guides you can see the team guidelines here:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/DocumentationTeamInfo/JoinDocTeam

Or to get a wider view of the Documentation Team activities visit this page:

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/join-the-documentation-team/ where you will also find information about maintaining the LibreOffice Help pages and the documentation wiki.

If you have any questions you are welcome to post them to: documentation@global.libreoffice.org  or you can also join our Telegram group for documentation at https://t.me/joinchat/ALeRuUFCxyZY0wzoddldWQ

The team also gather together in our open to all bi-weekly on-line meeting: https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/tdfdocteam see: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Meetings for dates and times.

Join us! Happy documenting!

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