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[archive] Interface to OpenOffice/StarOffice?

  • February 19, 2004
  • 9 replies
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D

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

Thanks,
Rob

    9 replies

    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Originally posted by Robstan
    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux?
    Rob


    To my knowledge, StarOffice/OpenOffice does not support the COM interface, thus there is no typelibrary available and we cannot connect to it. As far as I have learned, StarOffice/OpenOffice has their own interface (which is indeed open) that provides interfacing mechanisms, but connectivity at this level requires C .
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Articles for COM Interface to OpenOffice are here:

    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/spec/ole_bridge.html
    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/tutorial/office_automation.html
    http://api.openoffice.org/docs/DevelopersGuide/ProfUNO/ProfUNO.htm#1 4 4 Automation Bridge

    I have not tried the automation myself, so not sure how complete the bridge is.

    For Linux, it would be interesting to know if the openoffice shared libraries could be called from the acucobol runtime. Really hard to tell from the info on the openoffice.org website.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Articles for COM Interface to OpenOffice are here:

    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/spec/ole_bridge.html
    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/tutorial/office_automation.html
    http://api.openoffice.org/docs/DevelopersGuide/ProfUNO/ProfUNO.htm#1 4 4 Automation Bridge

    I have not tried the automation myself, so not sure how complete the bridge is.

    For Linux, it would be interesting to know if the openoffice shared libraries could be called from the acucobol runtime. Really hard to tell from the info on the openoffice.org website.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Articles for COM Interface to OpenOffice are here:

    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/spec/ole_bridge.html
    http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/tutorial/office_automation.html
    http://api.openoffice.org/docs/DevelopersGuide/ProfUNO/ProfUNO.htm#1 4 4 Automation Bridge

    I have not tried the automation myself, so not sure how complete the bridge is.

    For Linux, it would be interesting to know if the openoffice shared libraries could be called from the acucobol runtime. Really hard to tell from the info on the openoffice.org website.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Most interesting, I haven't heard about this bridge before. I will take a look at this.
    Do you know if this is for Star Office exclusively or will it apply to Open Office as well or vise versa?
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Appears to apply to both. This particular article: (http://udk.openoffice.org/common/man/tutorial/office_automation.html ) mentions automating OpenOffice and referring to the StarOffice programmers tutorial for explanation of the automation objects. Thus, OpenOffice and StarOffice appear to be based on the same object model.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Well, looked into this a bit myself and the VB code samples show that there is no reference to a type libarary for OpenOffice. Instead, it has to create an activex object using the vb CreateObject method:

    Set objServiceManager= CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

    There is no equivalent for this in acucobol, correct?

    Sounds like creating a VB active dll as an interface to the OpenOffice API would work.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Well, looked into this a bit myself and the VB code samples show that there is no reference to a type libarary for OpenOffice. Instead, it has to create an activex object using the vb CreateObject method:

    Set objServiceManager= CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

    There is no equivalent for this in acucobol, correct?

    Sounds like creating a VB active dll as an interface to the OpenOffice API would work.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 18 February 2004]

    Has anyone ever been able to accomplish writing an interface to OpenOffice or StarOffice in Linux? We currently have written an active-x interface to MS Word (for Windows, obviously) that will perform a mail merge among other things. We are looking for a possible way to do something similar in the Linux world.

    My thoughts are that we need a C program that our COBOL program can call or that maybe there is some things we can do with command line interfaces to make this possible. Does anyone have any expertise/experience that they can offer?

    Thanks,
    Rob
    Well, looked into this a bit myself and the VB code samples show that there is no reference to a type libarary for OpenOffice. Instead, it has to create an activex object using the vb CreateObject method:

    Set objServiceManager= CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

    There is no equivalent for this in acucobol, correct?

    Sounds like creating a VB active dll as an interface to the OpenOffice API would work.

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