Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
What made FireFox so populer was not the its being open source. Rather it had an open architecture for plug-ins so that many developers were able to contribute to FireFox.
What is your plan about SoftMaker office suite regarding this point?
What is your plan about SoftMaker office suite regarding this point?
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- SoftMaker Team
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The future will be here soon...
The next release of SoftMaker Office for Windows has an OLE Automation-compatible programming API and ships with the scripting language BasicMaker. Both will enable anybody to automate TextMaker and PlanMaker and to write add-ins.
The next release of SoftMaker Office for Windows has an OLE Automation-compatible programming API and ships with the scripting language BasicMaker. Both will enable anybody to automate TextMaker and PlanMaker and to write add-ins.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH
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- SoftMaker Team
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It may be old, but it makes it possible to rewrite existing Excel and Word macros and plug-ins with a reasonable amount of work to run in TextMaker and PlanMaker. And that is a killer argument for SoftMaker Office.
Last edited by martin-k on Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH
Excellent point. Keep OLE Automation in place if that is the case for windows customers.
However, meanwhile, additionally, consider a broader and community supported plug-in architecture similar what FireFox guys did. Please see the following link to get what I mean.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
However, meanwhile, additionally, consider a broader and community supported plug-in architecture similar what FireFox guys did. Please see the following link to get what I mean.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
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- SoftMaker Team
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Thanks. I'll have a look, especially to see what kinds of add-ons Mozilla developers have invented.erika wrote:Excellent point. Keep OLE Automation in place if that is the case for windows customers.
However, meanwhile, additionally, consider a broader and community supported plug-in architecture similar what FireFox guys did. Please see the following link to get what I mean.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH
OLE Automation, seriously is not useful if I am going to help extending SoftMaker.
Make it one of the following, or both:
1. .NET/Mono extension interface
2. Script using Ruby (Kexi did that, its a good example)
I think there are not much really useful app created by OLE Automation (except those terrible slow Access apps, which I rather prefer to do it on VB/C# anyway)
BasicMaker seems like trying to increase compatibility, but I doubted how much user really cares about VBA now. Indeed MS has a plan on hand to completely kill VBA sooner or later as I remember (replaced by Visual Studio for Office, targeting developer more than end user programming) It might just not worth the effort.
Make it one of the following, or both:
1. .NET/Mono extension interface
2. Script using Ruby (Kexi did that, its a good example)
I think there are not much really useful app created by OLE Automation (except those terrible slow Access apps, which I rather prefer to do it on VB/C# anyway)
BasicMaker seems like trying to increase compatibility, but I doubted how much user really cares about VBA now. Indeed MS has a plan on hand to completely kill VBA sooner or later as I remember (replaced by Visual Studio for Office, targeting developer more than end user programming) It might just not worth the effort.
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- SoftMaker Team
- Posts: 3102
- Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2003 4:57 pm
- Location: Nürnberg, Germany
- Contact:
BasicMaker is just one of the possible OLE Automation clients for SoftMaker Office. You can just as well write OLE automated scripts using Delphi, C/C++, Python, Ruby*, whatever. You are certainly not limited to using BasicMaker.
* see for example: http://homepage1.nifty.com/markey/ruby/ ... dex_e.html
* see for example: http://homepage1.nifty.com/markey/ruby/ ... dex_e.html
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH
Re: Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
OpenOffice started to support extensions. I can say that it is extremely fruitful. SoftMaker should start a community supported extensions portal similarly.
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org
Re: Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
A plugin interface is already on our wishlist, but there is no fixed release date yet.
Tobias Leißner
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH
Re: Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
Any news on extensions, SDK, or plug-in architecture??? This company looks so slow.
Re: Open APIs and Plug-in Architecture
Not yet. Currently we are working on other important projects such as docx-support (which will be much better than in Open Office) and will investigate here at a later point.
Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Software GmbH