open office in another language?

[Stefan Behnel]

Sean Wolfe, 10.01.2012 22:43:
> I'm a somewhat-satisfied openoffice.org user. I mean it works, but if
> it weren't in Java I'd be doing some of my own tweaking. But since
> it's in Java I stay away... no likey.

It's been in C++ ever since the old StarOffice days, others have commented
on that already. Java is only one way of extending it, and it's not even
required by the installation.


> Has there been any talk of doing another similar office suite, or
> maybe just writer + spreadsheet, in a better language eg python? I
> expect it's a huge undertaking but ... thought I'd ask around at
> least.

OOo has been fully scriptable in Python for ages. It even comes with an
embedded Python runtime for that purpose (at least on
non-package-management systems like Windows). So, Python is actually a
standard component in all installations, whereas Java is not, and is
therefore not necessarily available in a deployment. Basically, if you want
your scripts to run in all OpenOffice/LibreOffice installations, you either
have to write it in StarBasic, or use Python.

The OOo extension API is called UNO, so look for the PyUNO bridge.
Admittedly, it's somewhat badly documented, but it basically works the same
way as the other UNO-API incarnations in other languages, so any UNO
documentation will generally apply just fine.

Also look for LibreOffice, as Ben Finney hinted. Since Oracle dropped Sun's
OOo commitment, many regard it as the future of OOo. It's certainly the
place where the development happens these days.

Stefan