[ GSOC ] UI logger using new DSL discussion

Hi,

I am Ahmed El-Shreif. I am working on improve the UI tesing DSL and
the log files for UI action with Markus Mohrhard and Xisco Fauli as my
mentors.

I need to discuss about something. First I will explain with small
description what I will do during this summer with LO then I will take
all opinions about something.

We have now a UI logger for user interaction that you can enable by
run this command
LO_COLLECT_UIINFO="test.log" instdir/program/soffice

then it will create a file in instdir/uitest/test.log that record all
your actions

last year the approach was to create a python code that work as
interpreter starts reading the log file line-by-line and tries to
convert the statements into a UI test case.

This year we approach to make a DSL language that we log all user
actions in it's grammer and when you run it it internally generate the
UI test corresponding to the user actions.

I was intend to use Xtext tool to build this DSL but when I focus more
in it's features and advantages I found most of it's advantage related
to Eclipse usage as a editor for the new DSL. Which I think not our
target. So after searching more I intend to used TextX instead as i
found it's implementation and integration with LO will be better.

textX is a Python framework inspired by Xtext. You can define the
grammar of your language with a syntax very, very close to the one
used by Xtext. textX does not use EMF or generate code but it use
instead the metaprogramming power of Python to define classes in
memory. While it seems nice and easy to use, textX does not generate
editor support like Xtext, so that is a major difference.

I need your opinions about the textX choice.

I am very sorry for this long message.

Thanks
Ahmed ElShreif
nick : shiko