[Gambas-user] A friendly face on LibreOffice towards Gambas

[Bruce]

On 4/3/19 2:20 pm, Cedron Dawg wrote:
> Good News, it's going to be quite possible.
> 
> Piece of cake, here is a system diagram:
> 
>   
>    
>      =====================
>      :  Gambas Programs  :                   O S
>      =====================
>            |                         I N D E P E N D E N T
>            V
>      ==================                    L A N D
>      :  GB.LO_(type)  :
>      ==================
>            |
> -   -   - | -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -
>            |
>            |
>            |    L I N U X             ------------------------
>            |                          :  LibreOffice Daemon  :
>            |     L A N D              ------------------------
>            |                                      |      *
>            |                                      |      *
>            |                                      |      *
>            V                                      |      V
>     ------------------------------                |   ---------------
>     :  OSGB.GambasToLibreOffice  :                |   :  LO_(Type)  :
>     ------------------------------                |   ---------------
>            |                                      |
>            |                                      |
>            |                                      |
>            V                                      V
>       -----------------------                 ----------------------------
>       :  libGambas_ToLO.so  : <-=-=-=-=-=-=-> :  libLibreOffice_ToGB.so  :
>       -----------------------     TCP/IP      ----------------------------
> 
> 
Interesting concept!
My own experiences with LO "macro programming" left me somewhat less 
than enthused. The object module is apparently a mystical secret known 
only to the inner circle and their publicized documentation about as 
transparent as a brick.

Now something that would do what you propose above would be fantastic, 
but then again I would be overjoyed if not ecstatic with a library that 
just let me make LO graphs with data provided by a Gambas program 
through a somewhat "static" interface.

I mean, OK, LO can ACCESS (haha see below) a database and get the data 
into a spreadsheet and produce a (more or less) nice graph. However this 
is, in my case, an entirely manual and tiresome exercise when doing it 
200+ times a day. What I would like is to be able to is define a graph 
in LO and then from within a Gambas program, invoke that sheet, provide 
the data and get pack a pic of the graph.

(No disrespect intended to those authors of the Gambas graphing component)

So, one of our user's could request a plot of ThisHorse over 
ThatCriterion in a live sense and we wouldn't have to spend hours a day 
generating a limited amount of plots based on what we think may be 
interesting auction lots.

  Looking forward to seeing more on your efforts!
> 
> Anybody else have experience in defining assymetric communication protocols?
> 
Yes, many years (and many years ago). It's pretty simple.


Finally, now you wrote in your original post about VBA. This may be of 
interest.

Many, many winters ago, when men were real hairy men etc... a couple of 
guys wrote this 80x0 based database thingo called "OpenAccess". This 
thingo was quite amazing. It even had a gooey (didn't have GUI's in 
those days) bizzo that let you code user level programs to access a 
database and display the results and let the user manipulate the data by 
means of "forms". It even had a bizzo that created "banded" reports of 
the data.

If you wanted to do some particularly tricky bit of data manipulation 
there was even a thing they called a macro programmer. The whole thing 
was pretty amazing really, except it used their own database management 
system. The macro programmer used a little regarded "language" called BASIC.

Anyway, some gut from Seattle bought the ideas from them for a pittance 
(read stole), including something they had been working on that would 
let OpenAccess interact with some proprietry DBMS's. (Let's just call 
that the beginnings of ODBC.)

So, OpenAccess became Access. The macro programmer language became 
"AccessBasic". Some M$ wizkids saw the potential of that and 
incorporated AccessBasic into (ahem) "Office".

Cutting the rest of this long story short, as you kiddies need to sleep, 
is that OpenAccess BASIC became AccessBasic which begot "BA" who was 
long apon the land and begot (in a misbeguided moment) "VBA".

So! Hows that for some history?

If you doubt my credentials just ask me about indexed indirect jumps in 
assembler.

cheers
B