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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Serial letters are back
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () planescape ! com>
Date:       2001-08-27 17:42:28
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On Mon, Aug 27, 2001 at 07:27:25PM +0200, Sven Lueppken wrote:
> Hi again!
> 
> I worked on serial letters again and commited
> the attached patch one hour ago!
> Everything works great but I'm quite unsatisfied with
> the current implementation!
> 
> Users which came from other operating systems usually expect
> that they're able to connect to a spreadsheet application to
> import their records as variables into their wordprocessor!
> In KWord you have to insert them all by hand! That's quite complicated and
> double work if you have already created a Excel or KSpread table with your
> addresses, names etc.!
> 
> I thought of creating a kind of import filter for KSpread so that KWord
> can take the records from a KSpread table!
> What do you think of that idea? Do you have any idea how I could do this?
> Any other suggestions, opinions? :)
> 

Basically I have not really understood the concept of serial letters in KWord
to well, and I think that is a bad thing.  (/me not being really stupid and
probably smarter then the some users ;)

Much can be fixed by a new and better dialog for this, but your statement 
about external imports is valid.

However I was thinking about a more modular solve then the one you described;

I was thinking about a plugins-like option where the user can select a 
script we, or a third party, provide. 
This script will (open and) query a kspread instance and read the data via
a scripting language to KWord, making that import painless.

The script can also be rewritten to use another datasource, like a database
for instance.

I always planned to use KoScript for this, since it is powerfull enought to 
do so, but not powerfull enough to create viruses in.

DCOP is for that reason not really a good idea, since we don't want to install
a script that has the option to write to  the filesystem at the same time.

Werner; is the above an option in KoScript, since you asked recently about
the 'future' of KoScript...

-- 
Thomas Zander                                            zander@earthling.net
The only thing worse than failure is the fear of trying something new

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