From kde-core-devel  Mon Oct 02 13:33:50 2006
From: Randy Kramer <rhkramer () gmail ! com>
Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:33:50 +0000
To: kde-core-devel
Subject: Re: Using scripting languages for KDE4 main modules
Message-Id: <200610020933.51321.rhkramer () gmail ! com>
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=115979869823218

On Monday 02 October 2006 05:29 am, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> This whole discussion is confused from the start. The big thing about
> extending applications with scripting is not creating features for
> distribution: it is making it possible for people to extend the
> functionality of their application locally. Like the molecular biologist
> who scripts kword and krita to load his research data and create
> illustrations automatically. For that use case it _is_ important to offer a
> variety of language choices because such a domain specialist is not going
> to learn a new language just because the kde gurus tell him so. Same with
> kicker: if I want to add a quick script to regularly poll some webservice
> and display the result on the panel, I would like to do that in the
> language I'm most proficient with.

<delurking>
Disclaimer: Sorry, I don't use koffice, except rarely.  (Haven't had to do 
word processing or a spreadsheet in quite a while, working (very slowly) on 
my own free format database application.  But, when I did have to use 
spreadsheets, databases, and a word processor to get "real work" done (as a 
(customer's) project engineer for (large) capital projects:

I found that Microsoft's Visual Basic (i.e., a very simple to understand 
language, at least for simple things) combined with the ability provided in 
Microsoft Office to record "keyboard macros" and then enhance them was a 
wonderful way to create scripts.

In case someone is not familiar with what I'm referring to, in any of the 
(main) Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Access), you could tell 
the application to record your keystrokes.  They weren't quite recorded as 
"raw" keystrokes, they were recorded as Visual Basic (for Applications) 
commands.  You could then switch to a special editor to edit these commands 
and enhance them with things that couldn't be detected from the recording of 
keystrokes (e.g., things like making them conditional (adding / surrounding 
them with if then else statements and similar).

I'm not so much advocating Basic or anything like it, but that ability to 
record and then enhance keyboard macros is a wonderful thing!  I would think 
it could be adopted to any (scripting) language.  (To give myself a 
clue/reminder, something like the insertion of a string of text characters 
was recorded as the basic command to insert text (I can't recall the command, 
but to make one up, something like 'insert("This is a test")' (to insert 
"This is a test" into the "buffer").)

</delurking>
Randy Kramer

</delurking>