OpenOffice !

[MCP]

Since I haven't been running MS Office for over the last 7 years and my experience with AutoIt is widening, I do feel a big lack of support in the AutoIt community for OpenOffice.

Are there any functions to work with it? I have moved to open source and freeware apps and I would be happy to simply go on like this.

By now, I simply found this: http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...p;hl=openoffice

Is that the only starting place? I haven't got the skill to go on by myself from there...

[PsaltyDS]

Since I haven't been running MS Office for over the last 7 years and my experience with AutoIt is widening, I do feel a big lack of support in the AutoIt community for OpenOffice.

Are there any functions to work with it? I have moved to open source and freeware apps and I would be happy to simply go on like this.

By now, I simply found this: http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...p;hl=openoffice

Is that the only starting place? I haven't got the skill to go on by myself from there...

This has been discussed before. OpenOffice.org (and Firefox) project people have a completely different view of external interfaces from Microsoft. MS Office and IE are targeted at the Windows environment and the ability of one process to access and change the window of another process. This is basically what AutoIt does (and does well).

One of the big reason there is no "AutoIt for Linux", "AutoItBSD", or "kAutoIt" is that in most environments outside of MS Windows one process having that level of access to other processes' windows and structures is considered a HUGE security hole and a major reason NOT to use Windows (or at least not to use MS Office and IE).

Of course, lack of security seems to equate roughly with ease of use and ease of automation. Greater security and separation of programs from each other makes automation (outside of what may be built in to the program itself) harder.

What does that do to OO.o and Firefox? You can do powerful macros, scripting, add ons, extensions, etc. in both, but they have to be done FROM THE INSIDE. To them, your AutoIt or VBS script trying to reach in and do things is a security violation, not useful automation. Both are Open Source projects and you could create "MCPOffice.org" and "MCPfox" -- now what will you change? You'll have to take the internal workings of the programs and expose them to external calls as a COM provider, or something similar. So you can code that up and make it work (others probably already have).

Now you post your changes back as inputs (part of the Open Source process) to the OO.o and Firefox projects and they all get rejected for inclusion in the main line products. Why? They are considered egregious security holes.

So you get yourself a website and post MCPOffice.org and MCPfox browser for people to download free, offering to sell your services in customization and support. Almost nobody bites. The conversation is something like this:

Did you hear about that new version of OO.o, "MCPOffice"?

Yeah, but I wouldn't let it near any of my computers, the developer poked holes in all the security to make external automation easier!

I'm not an OO.o or Firefox programmer (I'm not even a programmer, really) so I may need correction on the details, but I think that's what you are up against.

Edit: Typos

Edited September 15, 2007 by PsaltyDS

[MCP]

Now you post your changes back as inputs (part of the Open Source process) to the OO.o and Firefox projects and they all get rejected for inclusion in the main line products. Why? They are considered egregious security holes.

Hum, I understand and I can partially share this opinion, but Firefox extensions weaken the application security as well, while giving it better tricks/hacks/instruments on all the platforms it run on and nobody has anything to say about it.

I think it is the Microsoft way that is often and correctly under attack, not what it does.

Humm... Probably the answer could be creating an extension that, on demand, might expose part of the xul programmable structure/language.

[MCP]

Ah.. I have been using Linux for many years - at least since Slackware completely fitted on 29 floppy disks (those were the very early days of Linux - and I know a bit of the Unix shell programming, but, still, the more I know it... I miss AutoIt on Ubuntu.

Thus, I would never say never... AutoIt might still fill in an area that is not yet covered on Linux...

FYI

I am a systems engineer who has always developed command line tools only: no GUI knowledge on Windows as well as on X (I had no time to deepen them: I was more interested on formatting disks than on searching databases).