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You can do everything you want in MS Office. You don't have to pay for it. So keep using it, and I hope it makes you happy. I'll go on using OOo and be very happy with it.

There are plenty of business users who do not buy a Bazillion or even merely a Jillion copies to obtain steep discounts and get to be best buddies with Microsoft.

OOo is not only for the home user. There are plenty of small businesses and schools that can use OOo. Have you seen the Star Office for Kids site?

I just discovered, last night in fact, that a pet grooming shop in my area gives out a 2004 calendar. I noticed that the calendar is produced by an OOo macro that I wrote (and LGPL'ed). I was pleased to say the least (to see OOo being used).


However to me, the ONLY SURE WAY FOR NEW SOFTWARE TO SUCCEED (proprietary or open source) is to offer new functionality.

I disagree with this statement. If you see the world only in terms of 10,000 unit deployments, then this may color your perception of things. One way that new software can succeed over proprietary software is by being open source and having open document formats, and a large powerful open API.

There are two issues here.

The headless box. Run soffice -help to get a list of command line options. Or go here to see a list of command line options. On Windows running soffice -help brings up a window showing command line options.

OOo can be programmed from Basic, Java, and Python. I have done all three. On Windows, you can use any Windows Automatation language, such as Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual FoxPro, Delphi. I personally have used Visual FoxPro to script OOo. Someone on OOoForum has used Ruby on Windows to script OOo.

The API has a steep learning curve, but it is very powerful and capable. I have run a java program that can be run on one computer, and connect to an OOo running on another computer to create drawings of mazes. The two computers don't have to be running the same OS. Or you can run both the java program and OOo on the same computer.

If you download the SDK, there is a Java example called DocumentConverter.java. There is also a document converter Servlet in the SDK examples.

Here are a few places to start.

Deloper's Guide

Online API reference

OOo Developer

api.openoffice.org

udk.openoffice.org

Software Developer's Kit

Finally, go hang out on OOoForum.org in the Macro's and API section. I frequent that and answer a lot of questioons and post code fragments and examples there.

Got OpenOffice.org? Want to see something more amusing than boring business reports?

Well, I've programmed a working Digital Clock and also a Calculator as an OOo Drawing.

See here: Digital Clock and Calculator .

For something completely different see this.

Danny's Draw Power Tools .

Got OpenOffice.org? Want to see something more amusing than boring business reports?

Well, I've programmed a working Digital Clock and also a Calculator as an OOo Drawing.

See here: Digital Clock and Calculator .

For something completely different see this.

Danny's Draw Power Tools .

Got OpenOffice.org? Want to see something more amusing than boring business reports?

Well, I've programmed a working Digital Clock and also a Calculator as an OOo Drawing.

See here: Digital Clock and Calculator .

For something completely different see this.

Danny's Draw Power Tools .

Is Ability open source? (OOo is, SO is not.)

OpenOffice.org is well known, has third party books available, and third party training. If you want a commercial counterpart, there is StarOffice. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

There is one major feature of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that don't seem to get as much play as they should in a forum like Slashdot. It is programmable in Basic, Java, Python. If you install the scripting framework then is is programmable in BeanShell (i.e. interactive Java), JavaScript, and others in the future.

The OOo document format is well documented . XML in a Zip file. The DTD is available. KDE has announced that KOffice will be standardizing on the OpenOffice.org document format. So in theory, a Windows user running SO or OOo could exchange documents with a Linux user running KOffice. (Not that both OOo and SO don't also run on Linux.)

Developer documentation is readily available, and also a large downloadable SDK. Third parties can develop new components that run within and seemlessly integrate into OOo or SO.

There are lots of resources for OOo.
Won
Too
Free
Fore
Phive
Sicks
Sevin
Ate
Nighn
Tin
Eleven
Twelve
Firteen
Foreteen
Fifteen
This is by no means an exhaustive list.

I have personally taken an interest in OOo and written a Java program (and other tools ) The java program draws Mazes on a running copy of OOo, but the java program can be run on a different computer, over the net. (Win -> Linux, Linux -> Win, etc.)

Is Ability open source? (OOo is, SO is not.)

OpenOffice.org is well known, has third party books available, and third party training. If you want a commercial counterpart, there is StarOffice. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

There is one major feature of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that don't seem to get as much play as they should in a forum like Slashdot. It is programmable in Basic, Java, Python. If you install the scripting framework then is is programmable in BeanShell (i.e. interactive Java), JavaScript, and others in the future.

The OOo document format is well documented . XML in a Zip file. The DTD is available. KDE has announced that KOffice will be standardizing on the OpenOffice.org document format. So in theory, a Windows user running SO or OOo could exchange documents with a Linux user running KOffice. (Not that both OOo and SO don't also run on Linux.)

Developer documentation is readily available, and also a large downloadable SDK. Third parties can develop new components that run within and seemlessly integrate into OOo or SO.

There are lots of resources for OOo.
Won
Too
Free
Fore
Phive
Sicks
Sevin
Ate
Nighn
Tin
Eleven
Twelve
Firteen
Foreteen
Fifteen
This is by no means an exhaustive list.

I have personally taken an interest in OOo and written a Java program (and other tools ) The java program draws Mazes on a running copy of OOo, but the java program can be run on a different computer, over the net. (Win -> Linux, Linux -> Win, etc.)

Is Ability open source? (OOo is, SO is not.)

OpenOffice.org is well known, has third party books available, and third party training. If you want a commercial counterpart, there is StarOffice. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

There is one major feature of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that don't seem to get as much play as they should in a forum like Slashdot. It is programmable in Basic, Java, Python. If you install the scripting framework then is is programmable in BeanShell (i.e. interactive Java), JavaScript, and others in the future.

The OOo document format is well documented . XML in a Zip file. The DTD is available. KDE has announced that KOffice will be standardizing on the OpenOffice.org document format. So in theory, a Windows user running SO or OOo could exchange documents with a Linux user running KOffice. (Not that both OOo and SO don't also run on Linux.)

Developer documentation is readily available, and also a large downloadable SDK. Third parties can develop new components that run within and seemlessly integrate into OOo or SO.

There are lots of resources for OOo.
Won
Too
Free
Fore
Phive
Sicks
Sevin
Ate
Nighn
Tin
Eleven
Twelve
Firteen
Foreteen
Fifteen
This is by no means an exhaustive list.

I have personally taken an interest in OOo and written a Java program (and other tools ) The java program draws Mazes on a running copy of OOo, but the java program can be run on a different computer, over the net. (Win -> Linux, Linux -> Win, etc.)

If you want to program OOo, you need to learn UNO.

On Windows, you can program OOo from any application that works with automation. (i.e. Visual Basic, Delphi, MS Visual FoxPro, etc.)

OOo can be programmed from any language for which a complete UNO bridge has been written. Recently Python was just added as a first-class language.

AppleScript could have an UNO bridge written for it. (Perhaps as a scripting extension. You know what I'm talking about if you are a Mac user.) But AppleScript's typical syntax way of scripting applications is definitely NOT how you will work with OOo. It involves a lot of method calls and objects.

Perhaps a scripting extension could be written that accepts AppleEvents, and therefore within AppleScript uses a syntax more conventional for AppleScript users. But such a thing would be completely outside of OOo proper. As a Mac user who has moved to Linux, I wouldn't care much. But there may be someone who would have the motivation to build such a thing.

See this for examples of the dabbling I have done for OOo in three languages: StarBasic, Java and MS Visual FoxPro. The link takes you to a directory where you can download Danny's Draw Power Tools. (Click "parent directory" to find other things. But especially the Turtle Graphics tutorial for OOo.)

My favorite of the Draw Power Tools is Flower Gears. I had a lot of fun writing it. What is it? It is like a certian toy whose name I won't mention that you might have had as a child. A plastic ring has gear teeth on its inside. A smaller wheel with gear teeth rides along the inside of the ring. You put a ball point pen through a hole in the smaller inner wheel and create drawings that can resemble a flower. This tool lets you enter the parameters (such as number of gear teeth) and then creates an OOo Drawing of the figure.