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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Question regarding Koffice and form controls.
From:       Sebastian Sauer <mail () dipe ! org>
Date:       2006-10-24 13:10:45
Message-ID: 200610241510.45866.mail () dipe ! org
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Hi P. J. :)

On Monday 23 October 2006 09:53, P. J. Coombe wrote:
> Hi all. Looking at this program as a potential tool for my Linux boxes.
>
> However, there are a couple of prerequisites, things I need, and I can't
> seem to find the appropriate information on the website.
>
> My main need is the ability to automate or semi-automate spreadsheets
> through the use of form control widgets. Now, I know you can do this in
> Excel, as I have done it a fair bit. I know you can do this in OOo, but
> doing so makes it run slower than a wet week.
>
> Does KSpread have the ability to utilise form control widgets? If not,
> is there a way to combine the calculations I need in KSpread with
> another application to give me the form-based front-end?

As far as I know KSpread does not support XForms / custom FormWidget's per 
default. What is possible is to use external tools. So far I see there 3 ways 
to extend KSpread;

1. Write a plugin.

KSpread has a very flexible and powerful plugin-interface to integrate 
optional plugins. So, just like most (or at least most I tried so far :) 
parts of KDE, you are able to write "KParts::Plugin" ( 
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/3.4-api/kparts/html/classKParts_1_1Plugin.html ) 
plugins.
To write them for sure a bit of knowledge about Qt/KDE and C++ is needed. But 
the solution would be very powerful and could propably be distributed by 
default in future KDE-releases.

2. Write a script.

KSpread supports scripting with Python and Ruby. You may note the 
Tools=>Scripts=>ScriptEditor as an example for a within PyQt 
written "plugin". Also via Tools=>Script Manager=>Get New Scripts you are 
able to fetch additional scripts that demonstrate what's possible.
You may also like to take a look at http://kross.dipe.org for some more 
details.

3. Use Kommander

As discovered just some days ago by the great Kommander-developers ( 
http://kommander.kdewebdev.org/ ) it's possible to e.g. add a link to a 
spreadsheet that does then execute a Kommander-script. The strong side of 
Kommander is, that it provides a very nice graphical Editor to create 
scripts.
Hopefully there will be a nice example around within next 2-3 weeks that 
demonstrates what's possible here already today.

Please also note, that KDE3 comes with a very powerful IPC (interprocess 
communication) solution that allows to connect applications together and 
extend that way KSpread with other applications (here it depends what exactly 
you like to achive and what applications could be used for it). The solution 
is named "dcop" and you should be able to find a lot of useful documentations 
and examples with your favorit search-engine since it's for a long while in 
productive use.

I hope that helped at least a bit to get an overview. If there are future 
questions please just ask cause we are surly interessted in that topic too 
and it would be nice to hear how you solved the task or how you like to solve 
it. Thanks :)

-- 
Sebastian Sauer aka dipesh[sebsauer]
http://www.dipe.org/public_key.asc
Fingerprint: 8F1E 219B 16E6 4EC7 29CC F408 E193 65E2 9134 2221
Coder in http://www.koffice.org && http://www.kmldonkey.org
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