[Gambas-user] Anybody have an example using DCOP?

[johnf]

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 09:22, Benoit Minisini wrote:
> On Tuesday 10 January 2006 18:10, johnf wrote:
> > On Tuesday 10 January 2006 01:29, ron wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 10 January 2006 04:22, johnf wrote:
> > > > On Monday 09 January 2006 19:11, johnf wrote:
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > > I did not find an example of using DCOP anywhere (or am I just
> > > > > missing it). I'd like to run kword.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks
> > > > > John
> > > >
> > > > Ok I just found kate (I did not know what kate was until now because
> > > > I didn't notice it was on the list of demo's).  But where can I find
> > > > out about the functions for kword - like the functions found in the
> > > > kate demo?
> > > >
> > > > John
> > >
> > > You can use 'kdcop' to see something, but how exactly to use and
> > > then with gambas is not pretty to find.
> > >
> > > For dcop main info you must go to developer.kde.org is my best guess
> >
> > I have discovered that kdcop does not display anything with respect to
> > "kword".
>
> You must launch kword so that it is displayed in the kdcop list.
>
> > But I did find an old article describing how to use the dcop at
> > the command line.  Later I'll provide a few commands for dcop.
> >
> > But here is the basic issue.  I need some sort of report writer that will
> > provide an invoice, and general reports.  It has to work (or made to
> > work) with a result object.  So I decided I would first check into the
> > word processors for Linux (OpenOffice and Kword).  In the windows world
> > working with word processors is easy and I thought I could do the same
> > with Linux. But what I'm discovering is a real mess.  Kword uses "dcop"
> > and looks like it might work.  But kword has at least two issues:
> > 1.  It is not the current leader - OpenOffice is.
> > 2.  It is based on frames and not the standard text as other word
> > processors. 3.  (not sure this is right) It appears that dcop will be
> > replaced with dbus.
> >
> > OpenOffice also has several ways to be automated.
> > 1. Use UNO - something I don't understand and find it hard to follow the
> > programming examples (mostly the C++ stuff).
> >
> > 2. Star basic - but again find little information - but it still looks
> > like I need to at least use some sort of UNO call to start the process.
> >
> > 3. There is something called URE that is a compiled and a run time
> > version of UNO.  Again almost no information.
> >
> > The problem that worries me the most is the issue of getting a wrapper
> > into Gambas for either UNO or URE.
> >
> > So what do I do?  That is the question!  Anyone have a suggestion?
>
> Yes :-)
>
> The simpler for me (and I would do that if I had to make a report) is to
> make an OpenOffice document that you will use as a template, by putting
> some markups inside where you want to put your data.
>
> Then you save your document, you take the resulting file, you unzip it, and
> you find the xml file that contain your markups. Then you replace the
> markups by your data (you will have of course to duplicate some xml
> structures, if you have to replace for example one line of markups by
> several lines of data). Then you zip back the file, and you should get the
> result in OpenOffice.
>
> Don't forget that xml is encoded in UTF-8.
>
> Finally, it is "just" a matter of dealing with 'zip', 'unzip' and text file
> manipulation in Gambas. And you have to understand the xml OpenOffice
> format file, but just the part where you have to put your data. Otherwise,
> this format is documented, so you have to read the doc to understand what
> you can do.
>
> Try it and tell me if it really works :-)
>
> Regards,

My kdcop does not display information on kword.  On other stuff yes like kate 
but not kword.  I had to use dcop from the command line.   SUSE 10.0.

Your suggestion on the editing of the saved XML (btw it is a jar with 
different sub-levels) can be done and is what I was going to attempt.  But 
how do I control OpenOffice so that the printing of the invoice is 
transparent to the user.  I want the user to click and have the document 
print.  I do this sort of thing from windows often (mostly for mail merge 
type of things).  So I think I still need a way to control openoffice.  

Or I could attempt to program the printer directly by creating a postscript 
file and then just printing it.  CUPS will handle the conversion to the 
printer.  But this sounds very difficult!  Maybe I could use a word processor 
to create the postscript document and then edit that??????

I saw that someone had started on a report writer but I did not see that 
anything was really done.  

Thanks for the suggestion.  

John