[Gambas-user] Connect to and control LibreOffice

[Doug Hutcheson]

On Tue, 2017-08-22 at 12:41 +0200, Benoît Minisini wrote:
> Le 22/08/2017 à 05:47, Doug Hutcheson a écrit :
> > On the page http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/doc/intro?nh is this
> > information:
> > 
> > Gambas is build on top of many free softwares, and could not exist
> > without them.
> > So I would like to thank every people involved in the following
> > projects:
> >   * Linux
> >   * KDE
> >   * GCC and all of the GNU tools, of course.
> >   * The Qt toolkit.
> >   * The GIMP and its toolkit GTK+.
> >   * Libre Office.
> >   * The MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite database management systems.
> >   * And any other libraries used by Gambas.
> > 
> > The reference to LibreOffice is interesting. Does it mean there are
> > built-in 'hooks' into LibreOffice? I suppose that would be too much
> > to
> > hope for, but perhaps there is a 'bridge' between LO and Gambas? I
> > need
> > to update several LO spreadsheets in tandem with creating and
> > maintaining a new PostgreSQL database storing the same data but in
> > properly normalised tables.I cannot change the structure of the
> > existing spreadsheets, so just uncompressing them and running
> > search-
> > and-replace processes is not quite good enough.
> > 
> > Any pointers to help in this would be welcome, even if only to say
> > I am
> > wasting my time.    "8-)
> > Kind regards,
> > Doug
> 
> No, it just means that I used LibreOffice to write some presentation 
> files. :-)
> 
> When I want to create a LibreOffice file, I do the following:
> 
> - I create a "template" LibreOffice file that has the look of the
> final 
> file, and where the data I want to put is replaced by string
> patterns.
> 
> - I unzip the LibreOffice file.
> 
> - I modify the content.xml file by replacing the string patterns
> with 
> the final data.
> 
> - I zip the result, and I get my final LibreOffice file.
> 
> Regards,
> 

Thank you for the clarification. I might be able to work with that, as
the uncompressed file would be available for both reading and writing.

I am also looking at controlling LibreOffice with python, as there is a
fully functional 'bridge' already in existence and Gambas has a python
component.

As you can see, I am still trying to put the pieces of the puzzle
together to achieve a useful outcome.

If I get the result I am hoping for, I will post the answer here.

Kind regards,
Doug