Contributing Docs / Tutorials / Other Resources

[perrycate]

This isn't so much an issue with vibreoffice as it is with Libreoffice's lack of documentation (that I can find at least), so I was wondering what resources you used @seanyeh to get familiar with Libreoffice's API. I'm interested in contributing if I can, since a vim plugin for libreoffice is an idea I had a while back but never figured out where to start. What would you recommend as far as getting familiar with how vibreoffice actually interacts with Libreoffice?

Also, (and this is a terribly newbish question, I'm sorry) is this written in Visual Basic or Visual Basic Script, or is there a difference? GitHub is telling me that it's Visual Basic, but a quick google search on the .vbs extension tells me it's VBScript. Are those the same thing? Pardon the newbishness.

[seanyeh]

Hey, thanks for your interest in my project! I've been busy with school so I probably won't be able to work on it until the summer, unfortunately, but I'm glad that you're interested in helping out!

Yes, the LibreOffice API is sparsely documented (and fragmented between Libreoffice and the OpenOffice docs) so it's just wading through what docs exist, looking through some of their extension examples, and Googling. There are a few LibreOffice extension tutorials out there as well.

Technically, the language is LibreOffice Basic (in other sources, also called OpenOffice Basic or StarOffice Basic), but I use the .vbs file extension so my editor can recognize the syntax. If you look at the Makefile, I have a custom shell script that "compiles" the .vbs file to a .xba file that LibreOffice can understand. My workflow is kind of weird but I'm not sure there is a "standard" way of doing it. If you've tried to use the built-in Basic editor in LibreOffice, you would know that it is absolutely a horror to use.

As for the code, I've tried documenting as much as I can, but I understand that there's quite a bit of spaghetti going on (the Basic language doesn't help much either).

Hope this helps :)

[perrycate]

Ok, that helps! I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty confused when I saw what I thought was Microsoft Visual Basic in an Open Source Libreoffice extension...

As for documentation, it's a pity that the Libre/openoffice stuff is so sparse, but I'll try to find what I can and learn what I can when I can. I understand what you mean about being busy with school - I'm in the same boat, but hopefully I'll get a chance to contribute in some way, if not now then over the summer. Like I said, vim keybindings for libreoffice are something I've had on the back burner for quite a while, and it's awesome that someone else is interested and already has a start on it that can be built on and added to. In the meantime I'll go ahead and mark some issues and suggestions I noticed when I tried this today