For those who haven't been already informed by the plugin update mechanism of NetBeans. We have  uploaded a new version 2.0.3 of our plugin in the update center of NetBeans 6.5. It's a micro release with minor bugfixes and better or final support for NetBeans 6.5.

 The most interesting features are:

• OXT properties have been moved in the normal project properties dialog and support of the latest oxt specific properties. That makes it really easy for you to provide a complete oxt extension with localized display names for the extension manager, icons, localized licence files etc.
• better project structure by providing a virtual oxt folder to separate clearly between oxt and office specific files and Java or NetBeans project files.
• some code templates. For example urqi for an useful expansion to queryInterface or  oohd to easy insert an OpenOffice specific header in your files.

tags: api extension netbeans openoffice

We have released a new version of the OpenOffice.org API plugin for Netbeans. The new version 1.1.3 is mainly a bugfix release and we have tested it with NetBeans 6.1 and the developer snapshot of Netbeans 6.5. It supports now OpenOffice.org 3.0 and of course it is the first version that supports the new OpenOffice platform Mac OSX.

What's new:

• support of OpenOffice.org 3.0
• Mac OSX support
• UNO Client application projects bundle now the complete UNO bootstrap glue code for better debugging etc.
• UNO component projects install now new UNO types in the office type system for shared usage with other components. That was a bug and it is important for more complex stuff.
  
• fix for the annoying bug 137404 NullPointerException when opening a project
• and more bug fixes.

Try it out and give us feedback.

tags: api netbeans openoffice.org

• The zipped JavaDoc API
  
• The JAR of the reference Java 5 implementation
  
• The zipped NetBeans package containing the sources of ODFDOM v0.6.

tags: api architecture code development netbeans odf opendocument software specification sun xml

ODFDOM is the name of the upcoming free OpenDocument framework sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc.

It will be the next evolutionary step after AODL and Odf4j. Designed together with their architects with the intent to provide an easy lightwork programming API for the ODF developer community. ODFDOM is meant to be portable to any object-oriented language.

The first pre-version of the Java 5 reference implementation of ODFDOM is planned to become available under LGPL3 in May 2008.

Please find further detailed information in the OOo Wiki.

 

tags: api architecture code development netbeans odf opendocument software specification sun xml

We still have one little issue that is no real error but it is definitely not nice. But the plugin works and is completely functional and because of many requests we decided to provide an intermediate version 1.1.1 on api.openoffice.org.

 The problem is that the NetBeans editor complains about unknown types. These types are generated from IDL types and we generate Java class files directly because of backward compatibility reasons. The cool NetBeans editor feature (indeed nice) requires Java code files for all generated and used types in a project (background compilation etc.). Anyway you can build your projects and everything works. If you prefer to get rid of this annoying editor message you can add a further library dependency to your project.

<project_node> -> context menu -> Libraries -> Add Jar/Folder -> <project_dir>/dist/IDL_types.jar

 We will try to fix this problem soon but we can't say when. So feel free to try the new version with NetBeans 6 and please report any kind of problems.

 

tags: api extensions netbeans openoffice.org plugin sdk

To all NetBeans users and users of our OpenOffice.org API plugin,

currently our OpenOffice.org API plugin is not available via the normal NetBeans 6 Update Center. The reason is quite simple, we have to fix some minor problems first. We are not really happy with this situation and we will try to fix this as soon as possible. The problem is that we have limited time at the moment because of some other projects but anyway stay tuned we will support NetBeans 6 soon.

The key point for me behind all the questions when will the plugin be available for NB 6, will you support NB 6  etc. is that it is really used. This little fact is really motivating and it helps us to convince our managers  that we can do more. You know if the demand is high we can probably spend more time on it ...

Anyway there are a lot of things that we can improve and we have a lot of other ideas how we can improve the plugin. Important is also that you as our users give us feedback. Share your ideas with us and we will see if and how we can achieve your ideas in the future development of the plugin. If you have experiences with NetBeans plugin development and if you are interested to join this project, please send me an email.  

I wish you our plugin users, all OpenOffice.org users and developers and of course all GullFOSS readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Juergen                    

PS: the animated gifs are from http://www.fg-a.com/christmas.htm

tags: api extensions netbeans openoffice.org plugin

The first flash demo showing how to use our OpenOffice.org API NetBeans plugin is available online. Roman Strobl (his blog about it) a colleague from the NetBeans team in Prague has created this cool flash demo showing how you can use our plugin to create quite easy a new built-in function for the Spreadsheet application. I met him last week in Zurich during the Jazoon conference and we talked about it and wow he has really fast created the demo. Many thanks Roman, you did a great job.

I already have it on my todo list to create this kind of stuff but have never found the time until now and of course i haven't any experience so far. But i think it is a really useful mechanism to do some promotion for our plugin and of course other OpenOffice.org related features as well.

How cool would it be to have a huge collection of nice flash demos showing/explaining

• how to create document templates
• how to work with styles
• how to install an extension (*.oxt) which isn't deployed directly from within NetBeans using our plugin ;-) but downloaded from somewhere else
• how to work with DataPilots
• how to create a presentation template
• ...
  

available on our OpenOffice.org website and maybe some of them on YouTube.

Roman is the expert in the NetBeans team and one of his last blog entries described how he did it. I would like to encourage you to read his blog entry and try it out. It is a good opportunity to help and contribute to the OpenOffice.org project, i would say low cost but really effective marketing.

tags: api extensions netbeans openoffice.org

Our OpenOffice.org API plugin for NetBeans is now available since ~4 weeks in the official NetBeans Update Center. Until today the statistic counts 10543 downloads. 10543 - a really awesome number, isn't it. The cool thing is that when i think about this number and 5% would really implement an extension, we would get ~500 extensions for OpenOffice.org.

Well, i don't really expect this number of extensions but all of you who have download the plugin, please try it out. Play with it, give us feedback and help us to improve it. Let us know what else you would expect or you would like to see in the plugin. We think better tool support is important and can help to lower the barrier for developers to get started. Extensions are always a good start point . You can work on  your own feature and you become this way more and more familiar with the OpenOffice.org API. If you like it and if you want to do more you can join one of our projects and can help to work on the core. Of course C++ support in our plugin is planned as well and it will help to bring you a little bit closer to OpenOffice.org core development because you probably know that OpenOffice.org is implemented in C++.

Anyway i am looking forward to hear from you and i hope to see some cool extensions in the near future.

tags: api development extensions netbeans openoffice.org

Since this is the first time I am writing in this blog, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Steffen Grund and I am working at Sun for 6 years now. I am member of the Programmability group, co-lead of the API project and one of the guys working on the OpenOffice.org API Plugin for NetBeans.

With the Plugin you can find out how easy it is to program OpenOffice.org with Java.

If you know the plugin from its humble beginnings, formerly named OOo Extension Plugin, you'll be amazed by what we have already achieved:
The OpenOffice.org API Plugin has finally reached version 1.0.0 and is available officially in the NetBeans Update Center. So, if you are curious (and why shouldn't you be?), give it a try:
Either click on Tools - Update Center in NetBeans, see that "NetBeans Update Center" is selected in the list of available centers and click Next. You can find the plugin in the Features section as "OpenOffice.org API Plugin".
Or go to the NetBeans Portal Page and download, the page is linked at the end of this text.

After installing the Plugin, you are greeted by a dialog that wants the paths to the OpenOffice.org and OpenOffice.org SDK installation. Enter or Browse to those and the Plugin will work fine.

Here's what you can do with it:

• Create projects
  

  All project types create working code. Once the wizard you have to step through is finished, a working project is created. It may not do anything, but it can be used in OpenOffice.org from the beginning. Even localization is possible.

• OpenOffice.org Calc Add-In Project Type
  

  Extend Calc with the additional function of your choice. You can either implement your own mathematical extension or simply wrap an existing Java library.
  

   

• OpenOffice.org UI Extension (Add-On)
  

  Add to the UI of OpenOffice.org an own menu and/or tool bar. Implement any additional command you would like to have in OpenOffice.org. You can also add custom icons for your commands and decide in which part of OpenOffice.org they will be seen, e.g. only Writer and Calc.
  

   

• General UNO Component Project Type
  

  A wizard for any kind of UNO component. You can either select from a list of existing service types or you can define completely new services with all depending types. (interfaces, structs, enums, ...)
  

   

• OpenOffice.org Client Application Project Type
  

  Create a client application with ease. You will get code to start and connect OpenOffice.org and can begin programming with a provided context.

  
  

• Recognize File Types

• User Interface definition file types (xcu/xcs)
  

  These file types are recognized as xml types by NetBeans after installing the plugin. This means there is syntax highlighting and auto completion available.
  

   

   

• UNO idl file type
  

  There is a custom file type wizard available to create idl files. In the first step, you must select the name location and UNO type (e.g. service, enum, interface etc.). Additional information is added in the second step. E.g. when an interface is created, the second step asks about the functions that the interface should contain. A complete working idl file is created - and it is compiled and packed inside of your types.rdb.
   

   

   

• Create, deploy and debug
  

  These actions are available in the context menu of an extension project in the "Project" view.
  

• Create OXT
  

  A complete OpenOffice.org eXTension (OXT) is created from your project, located in the "dist" folder of the project. From there you can distribute it to the world.
  

   

   

• Deploy OpenOffice.org Extension
  

  The OXT file is registered in OpenOffice.org inside of the user installation of the current user.
  
  

   

• Debug Extension in OpenOffice.org
  

  Maybe the coolest feature of them all, a temporary user installation of OpenOffice.org is created, located in the build directory of the project. Then OpenOffice.org is started with this user installation. Your job is now to excute the action in OpenOffice.org that starts your extension.

  Execution stops at any breakpoints added to the code of the extension and debugging can start from there. Who would have thought it could be that easy?
  

   

   

   

We have a lot of ideas for future development of the OpenOffice.org API Plugin for NetBeans. If you would like to contribute, please contact us or leave a comment.

Read more in the article by Kay Koll

http://www.netbeans.org/community/magazine/

Or visit our wiki page

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice_NetBeans_Integration

And do not forget to rate us in the NetBeans Plugin Portal:

http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp

tags: api development extensions netbeans