Re: Remove ActiveX from LibreOffice

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 8:44 AM, Chris Sherlock <chris.sherlock79@gmail.com>
wrote:

> What is our position on ActiveX?

As Michael accurately noted, ActiveX is for more than browser embedding.
It's a generic framework for cross-language modules, which IE simply
capitalized on. It is used quite heavily even in .Net applications in
certain areas, but far better hidden and isolated that it seems like the
forgotten technology that it is from the 90s. However, it's mostly used by
and for legacy applications and is likely to diminish in adoption.

So even though it's likely that we do have consumers of LO ActiveX (outside
of IE,) I think the far more interesting and comment-worthy point is that
we don't seem to be actively supporting our ActiveX layer (could it be
broken or crippled?).

My position on ActiveX is to leave it (lest we break applications in the
wild,) and to *announce its deprecation* with two goals: first, solicit the
feedback of LO ActiveX consumers and, if so inclined to continue using it,
help in its support. And second, to flag a date in the future when ActiveX
will be completely removed from LO codebase, pending sufficient reason and
support by its consumers.

We could tentatively mark 6.0 as the first major release to remove ActiveX.