Category: Development

Macros help users to automate common tasks in LibreOffice. In September 2019 we announced a new team in our community to work on macro support. A progress report was published in November 2019, so let’s review everything that happened since then.

If you are interested in contributing to the macro team (development, testing or documentation), we’d love to hear from you – please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org and we’ll get in touch.

Wiki docs

Thanks to Nathan Ullberg, many wiki articles previously only available in French can now be read in English as well. Nathan also updated existing articles and created an article about manipulating LineShape objects in Impress. Detailed lists of his work can be found on his wiki user page.

Alain Romedenne worked alongside Nathan with the macro articles and translations. He added LibreOffice Basic cheatsheets from Jean-François Nifenecker into the wiki and created a new article concerning input/output to screen with Python. Alain also started creating syntax diagrams for LibreOffice Basic.

Code contributions from macro team members

Andreas Heinisch:

• cInt function treats, as decimal
• Tab label too low within macro editor
• Typename function does not return the correct data type of a numeric constant
• Consider an underscore to be part of a string
• Adding variable to Watch window performs incorrectly if variable name contains_underscores
• Default values of string type and object type for optional parameters are not processed
• Data Type Characters with literals don’t affect resulting value type
• Don’t convert missing parameters to requested type

Alain Romedenne:

• Tests for VBA Enum statement, VBA Err object raise method and LibreOffice Basic Property Get/Set

Code contributions from honorary associate members

Mike Kaganski (Collabora):

• A missing optional argument is treated as a not declared variable
• ReDim is slow when array custom type is explicitly known
• Unicode vs. password protected user libraries
• XTextTableCursor::setPropertyValue(“BackColor”, x) sets paragraph background color, not cell background
• Use actual string leading characters for correct precondition match
• Searching the CharEscapement attribute using regexes replaces additional text
• Various internal improvements to array handling and stability

Samuel Mehrbrodt (CIB):

• Base macros cannot be digitally signed
• Can’t compare text range in table with text range in body text
• XItemListener::itemStateChanged not fired when changing selection with arrows

Jan-Marek Glogowski (CIB):

• Don’t ask to add a trusted macro signature, if trusted macro signatures are read-only
• Creating a new document from a template removes the signature from all Macros
• Crash when terminating the StarDesktop from running a document macro

Caolán McNamara (Red Hat):

• Selecting items in a visible list box in a dialog is very slow
• Problem scrolling past lines 999 & 1000 in the LibreOffice Calc Macro editor, in either direction if View – Line Numbers enabled

Stephan Bergmann (Red Hat):

• Various internal improvements to stability

Help content

Improved by Alain Romedenne:

• IsObject Function
• Error Function
• Using Procedures and Functions
• Using Variables

Added by Alain Romedenne:

• Property statement

Improved by Mike Kaganski (Collabora):

• IsObject Function

Improved by Stephan Bergmann (Red Hat):

• Chr Function
• ChrW Function [VBA]

Thanks to everyone who worked on these tasks! Everyone is welcome to join our community and get involved – just email ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org and we’ll get back to you.

LibreOffice’s native file format is OpenDocument, a fully open and standardised format that’s great for sharing documents and long-term data storage. Of course, LibreOffice does its best to open files made by other office software as well, even if they’re stored in pseudo-“standards” with cryptic and obfuscated contents. Compatibility with PowerPoint PPT(X) presentations is therefore a challenge, but developers are working hard on improvements…

A few months ago, we announced an initiative to improve the support of PPT and PPTX files in LibreOffice. Lots of great work happened since then and the results are collected below!

Everyone is invited to participate in the PowerPoint support initiative, either in development or testing. If you are interested in joining, please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org.

Import/export

Stephan Bergmann (Red Hat):

Speed up loading a PPT file with equation objects

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Noel Grandin (Collabora):

Speed up loading a PPT file with equation objects

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Miklos Vajna (Collabora):

Add PPTX import/export for semi-transparent shape text

PPTX import: don’t set shape fill from the style in case the background fill is already set

PPTX import: fixed duplication of math objects

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Tamás Zolnai (Collabora):

PPTX export: don’t change shape’s background transparency

PPTX export: don’t lose the gradient background fill of a slide

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Xisco Faulí (TDF):

PPTX import: display shapes with washout mode

PPTX export: handle image colour/graphics modes correctly

PPTX import: don’t lose text highlighting in table cells

PPTX export: save text highlighting

PPTX import: respect no fill colour for text

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Gülşah Köse (Collabora):

PPTX import: implement z-rotation of 3D text transformation

PPTX export: preserve textbox rotation attribute

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Tamás Bunth (Collabora):

PPTX import: custom date as custom XTextField

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Mark Hung (PPT/X team):

PPTX import/export: handle complex text properly

PPTX import: reset font settings, if necessary

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Luke Deller (PPT/X team):

PPTX import: Fix IsTransparent() for unloaded graphics

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Housekeeping

Julien Nabet:

Save/restore locking properly in ImplSdPPTImport::Import

sd: prefix members of SdrPowerPointImport

cppcheck: fix 2 funcArgOrderDifferent

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Various

Mike Kaganski (Collabora):

PPTX export: disable undo during save

Thanks to everyone for their great work!

Macros help users to automate common tasks in LibreOffice, and in September, we announced a new team in our community to work on macro support.

So, what has happened in the meantime? This article is a collection of the work done by the LibreOffice Macro Team in the past few months, as well as any other macro-related things in the project. If you are interested in contributing to the macro team (development, testing or documentation), we’d love to hear from you – please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org and we’ll get in touch.

Quality assurance work

Tomoyuki Kubota and Alain Romedenne reorganised the macro meta bug, creating several subcategories for macro issues and feature requests.

Wiki docs

Soon after the announcement of the macro team in early September, we were contacted by Nathan Ullberg, who promptly started contributing to the wiki documentation. Nathan is keeping notes on the progress of his work on his wiki user page. Alain is collaborating with Nathan on the wiki effort, which includes creating new articles with example macros, reviewing old ones and translating them from French to English.

Code contributions from macro team members

Tomoyuki Kubota:

• Optional macro parameter defined as Integer has type Variant/String causing type errors in the macro

Andreas Heinisch:

• Instruction Cint fails when converting Hex strings of a negative value to a 16-bit integer value

• Wrong type of function GetLastUsedRow (standard library Tools, module Misc)

• When opening a macro, allow searching a module/function name by typing the first letter

Alain Romedenne:

• Test case for Property Get/Let Basic Statement

Code contributions from honorary associate members

Mike Kaganski (Collabora):

• Only check closing parenthesis when in IDE

Stephan Bergmann (Red Hat):

• In checkUnoObjectType, check for derived-from types too

Samuel Mehrbrodt (CIB):

• Fix option to disable macros

• Infobar should have a UNO API

Help content

Improved by Alain Romedenne:

• LibreOffice Python Scripts Help

• Events

• LBound Function

• ThisComponent Object

• StarDesktop object

• GlobalScope specifier

• UNO Objects, Functions and Services

• Hex Function

• Type Statement

Improved by Olivier Hallot (TDF):

• VBA Properties

Added by Olivier Hallot (TDF):

• Calling Python Scripts from Basic

Finally, we have to highlight Alain’s presentation from the LibreOffice Conference 2019: Scripting LibreOffice Python macros, aka “Macros Well Kept Secrets”:

Big thanks to everyone for their contributions and special thanks to Alain for coordinating things and being a tireless macro educator! As mentioned, everyone is welcome to join our efforts to improve macro support in LibreOffice – you don’t need to be a developer. Help us with documentation, bug reports and more – and gain valuable experience on the way!