On Wed, May 11, 2016, at 04:18 PM, Andrew Pitonyak wrote:
For most users, the recorder is a decent solution. As for support, do not expect that from MS unless you have a credit card. I found some bugs in their C++ compiler about 15 years ago. 5 to 10 years later I thought for sure they would have fixed them. Nope, I had to work around them yet again. It had to do with their streaming classes. There was a failure when the <CR><LF> boundary was split by a buffer read for some built-in text reading routines. Not like I could just call MS and get support.
I agree that their support also has issues, but the good thing is the number of printed resources available. Did I mention I like to read documentation? A number of years ago I completed a very large VB6 project. A month later MS announced the end of VB as we knew it. That is when I decided to go with open source where ever possible. I still feel that way, but sometimes it just does not work out.
For sure they have a better object layer for manipulating documents. Not even close. I have never looked at their Macro programming resources, but, if possible, be certain to use the .NET classes since VBA is still littered with bugs. Last time I wrote a VBA application, half my code was related to working around bugs in their language implementation. These bugs initially existed in OpenOffice.org, but were fixed years ago; for example, bugs related to determining an arrays size in certain circumstances. I had to write special routines to deal with these issues. Moving to the .NET versions made things really nice, however, with full access to the .NET container classes. If you have no particular need to run where MSO is not supported, not a bad move. Good luck on your project. On 11.05.2016 08:42, dave boland wrote:Andrew, Thanks for the note. I actually do software development (Java right now) and enjoy reading documentation (no, not crazy - I've been tested). But when I read a document called "Getting Started With Macros", I reasonably expect it to cover the basics of how to create a macro from scratch - like I would with a VB program (did that for 6 years). I was disappointed to see that it was about using the macro recorder, which will not work for me. I get that the authors are volunteers, and that generally the do a fantastic job. However, in this area, not so much. I've decided that in the short term Calc (and Base) will not fit my needs (documentation, support concerns) and will move the data to Excel/Access. Not what I wan to do, and not what LO community should like, but it seems like the best course of action for this project. Dave, On Tue, May 10, 2016, at 02:19 PM, Andrew Pitonyak wrote:Dave, I am copying you directly since I do not know if the email client I am currently using will copy to the list; sorry about that, but I thought you might like my response faster than several hours from now when I am using my standard email client. On 10.05.2016 13:52, dave boland wrote:I want to automate a Calc spreadsheet to do some data analysis. I need some help finding a complete tutorial on Calc macros. Looking for something like the books published for Excell.Not familiar with themI read the documentation, but it says user created macros are beyond the scope of the documentation. REALLY! What the heck is the documentation for then?Done by volunteers and the documentation at which you looked was beyond their scope. http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/calc-guide/published-lo-4.1 Chapter 12 specifically says “Macros” http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/calc-guide/published-lo-4.1/cg4-1-ch12-calc-macros/view Chapter 13 contains numerous macro tutorials and examples (well, it did when I wrote the first draft some years back) http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/calc-guide/published-lo-4.1/cg4-1-ch13-calc-as-simple-database/view Or, try here: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php This site contains numerous documents. You might want to look at these two documents. The first is a book and the second is more of a list of macros that accomplish certain tasks. It is kind of a roughly sorted brain dump. http://www.pitonyak.org/OOME_3_0.odt http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odtTried the chat, wants to know what channel. What the heck is that?No idea.Tried the web version of this mail group, but it would not accept the catcha code.Hate those!I'm growing frustrated and very angry.Wait until you try to write macros..... I mean, ummm, sorry you are frustrated and angry. LO Macros are very powerful in that they directly use the internal object structure and it is easy to add support for other languages. The disadvantage is that it has a steep learning curve, especially if you do not already understand software development. I usually recommend that people begin with an example that is close to what they need. The general language structure is essentially identical, but, for the most part, document manipulation methods is very different.This is supposed to be user support?It is community support. You did not pay for the product and the people who will now try to help you are all volunteers; they do it because they like to help people as part of a community. If you do not care for email type support, be sure to check out this forum https://forum.openoffice.org/en They have some very competent Macro people hanging out in the macro forums. Best of luck!
Dave, -- dave boland dboland9@fastmail.fmAndrew Pitonyak
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