Scripting user-defined functions: OpenOffice vs Gnumeric vs Other...

[Matt Morgan]

On 8/27/07, Gérard BIGOT <gerard.bigot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 8/27/07, chombee <chombee at nerdshack.com> wrote:
> > I'm new to spreadsheets but have a big data coding project that requires
> > one. I'm quite worried that I'll get deeply involved with one
> > spreadsheet app, design a big spreadsheet and enter a lot of data,
> > before realising that I need some computation that it can't do. I'm
> > gonna need to do some odd computations on this data. The thing that
> > would save me is a good scripting API, so that I can just write my own
> > functions with the full power of a programming language. I know Python,
> > for example.
> >
> > So far I've been using Gnumeric. It has a Python API that is incomplete
> > and only partially documented, a C API that is complete but
> > undocumented, and a Perl API which is undocumented (and I can't hack
> > Perl). It seems to be a great spreadsheet program otherwise but the
> > scripting a little worrying.
> >
> > So I went looking for some sort of documentation or tutorial on what
> > sort of scripting API OpenOffice Calc provides, but I'm not turning up
> > much information. I think it has its own scripting language (called Uno
> > perhaps?) and that there is also an API for Python. Is this correct? How
> > complete is the scripting support? Is there any good documentation for
> > it?
> >
> > Thanks
>
> I think you might get more information going where they tame the beast, I
> mean a openoffice.org forum.
>
> G.

I second that recommendation, but wanted to add: I've had success with
the OOo python api in the past. Unfortunately I was paying someone
else to do the work, so I didn't learn a lot about it, but it's there
and certainly worth asking about.

--Matt