Dear OpenOffice.org community,
This is the 2-weekly announcement of current issues
regarding the
OOo API project which I want to hightlight to the community.
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*** Todays Issue: Contributing to the OOo API Project
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The OOo community needs YOUR contribution too. And we are
sure that
you can contribute real value to OOo. Don't know how? YOU
too can
contribute to the OOo API project by:
- Reviewing the documentation and reporting issues if you
find any
- Useing the OOo API and reporting issues if you find any
- Answering the Questions of other Users of the OOo API
- Summarizing answers which were given to questions
(CodeSnippets)
- Contributing your larger API examples to our example
collection
- Pointing out important articles for the API OOo
NEWSLETTER
- Tracking unanswered questions on this mailing list
- Preparing the next issue of APIOOo TOPIC
- Writing Test Cases
- Translating Examples to C++ (NEW!)
- Becoming an Official OOo Contributor
Each idea contains a short description of how you could help
in
its respect, one ore more URLs for more information and an
estimation
about the efford on the task.
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*** Reviewing the documentation and report issues if you
find any
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Besides others, the OOo SDK contains a Developers Guide and
a
Reference Guide. It's not only important for developers
who
want to develop applications with OOo to know these well.
There is also always room for improvement in such documents.
Thus, read the documentation:
-> http://api.openoffice.org/DevelopersGuide/Develope
rsGuide.html
-> http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/c
om/sun/star/module-ix.html
And when you find anything to improve which you think should
actually
be improved, report an issue to IssueZilla.
After once being registered with IssueZilla, reporting an
issue is
just a matter of minutes.
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*** Using the OOo API and reporting issues if you find any
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Next you might want to use the OOo API for your own
projects.
Nothing is perfect, thus don't hesitate to report problems
you
consider worth getting fixed to IssueZilla.
Here you find a description of OOos IssueZilla:
-> http://
www.openoffice.org/project_issues.html
After once being registered with IssueZilla, reporting an
issue is
just a matter of minutes. Of course code examples, well
stripped
down to the point, would help us even more. Thus count
about up to
30 minutes for a complex issue.
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*** Answering the Questions of other Users of the OOo API
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devapi.openoffice.org is not an official support medium.
But that
does not mean, we do not want questions answers. The OOo
developers
will do their very best to answer questions, but WE NEED
YOUR HELP!
The OOo core development team is very small compared to
competing
projects. Thus we cannot answer all questions. If you know
an
answer of somebody elses question, please post it to the
list.
If you are not sure, answer anyway, but mention your
incertitude.
This way you give the core developers more space to answer
the tough
questions, maybe your next tough question.
If you know the answer off hand, it only needs a few minutes
to
contribute by answering questions. But we appreciate it
even
more if you have a vague idea and do some research.
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*** Summarizing answers which were given to questions
(CodeSnippets)
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If you asked a question and got a satisfactory answer with a
code
example, be so nice and save it for somebody else who might
have
the same question in future. The mail archive can be
searched,
but the search features are not good enough, mostly because
mails
are not structured enough. But there is a better way:
Summarize your question and the given answer(s) in an XML
format
for CodeSnippets. You can find more information here:
-> http://api.op
enoffice.org/SDK/snippets/
To delopy a CodeSnippet, you need about 15 minutes each.
Don't you think that the answer given to you was worth it?
Please submit the created codesnippet to the mailinglist
devapi.openoffice.org and it will be integrated into the
snippet-collection on http://c
odesnippets.services.openoffice.org/
by one of the comminity members with CVS commit rights.
As an addon to easily create codesnippets Paolo Mantovani
has created
an OO-Basic-Dialog which let you create codesnippets without
thinking
about the XML-Structure you have to follow. You can get the
small piece
of software from this location:
-> http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/snippets/SnippetCreator.z
ip
A installation instruction is available from the
codesnippets main page.
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*** Contributing your larger API examples to our example
collection
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If you implemented an interesting example using the OOo API,
why not share it with others. We want to build a
comprehensive
collection of code examples using the OOo API.
Check out this web page for more information:
-> http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/example_collection.html
To prepare a code example for public use, it might need some
hours,
in some cases even weeks. But see what you get for it:
examples
of others! Open Source Software is sharing and taking.
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*** Pointing out important articles for the APIOOo
NEWSLETTER
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There is a monthly newletter of this mailinglist devapi.openoffice.org.
It is currently maintained by Michael Hoennig <miopenoffice.org> and
posted on the 1st of each month to devapi.openoffice.org and
featuresapi.openoffice.org.
If you see articles which you consider worth being mentioned
in the
next APIOOo NEWSLETTER, please point them out to the
maintainer.
You do this by sunmmarizing the issue in the newsltter
style. Add
the URLs to the articles from the archive. The effort for
every
article is about 5-10 minutes.
-> http://api.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?li
stName=dev
Of course, you are also welcome to volunteer taking this
task completely.
Just contact the current maintainer to get more information.
The effort
of maintaining the list is about 2 hours a month plus
steadily reading
the mailing list articles, which you might do anyway.
More information about our newsletter can be found here:
-> http://api.open
office.org/NewsLetter/
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*** Tracking unanswered questions on this mailing list
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If there are unanswered questions on the devapi.openoffice.org
mailing list, APIOOo PENDING is now posted up to three
times a month
to remind everybody of these issues.
Some answers might be easy like "not possible
yet", an answer the
responsible developer usially can easily come up with. Or
the answer
could be "check out chapter ... in the Developers
Guide" or "search the
mailing list archive for keyword ...", but even such
answers can be of
high value for the person asking.
And of course, missing but important feataures should be
reported to
IssueZilla. This is actually a major motivation for me to
be after
these issues. Programmability of OOo is important for its
success.
Unfortunately time is not an endless resource. Thus the
core
development team cannot answer all questions, definitely the
API project
leads cannot answer all questions by themselves. But if
everybody
contributes their share, we can make this mailing list the
most helpful
place for all questions regarding the OOo API.
With the support of a mail client which shows threads,
checking out
the open issues and deploying them with a link into the
archive needs
about 5 minutes per issue. Where there are usually about
10-15
unanswered questions every month, the effort fo this task is
one hour
per month - at least if you follow the list anyway.
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*** Preparing the next issue of APIOOo TOPIC
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APIOoo TOPIC is intended for highlighting a current
topic in the
field of the OOo API and the OOo SDK. I plan to issue it
two times
a month. If nothing new available, I will just post this
animation.
But it would be much better if we had really good new
stories to tell,
don't you think so? Why not for example present projects
here which
highly usees the OOo API? Maybe your project next time? I
am sure
you will have other ideas.
The effort in preparing an issue for APIOOo TOPIC
highly depends
on the content, I guess between one hour and one day in most
cases.
It's up to you, get involved!
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*** Writing Test Cases
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The qadevooo API test framework is used for automated tests
of the
OOo API. It also can run JUnit tests from Java test
framework.
But native test cases can either be coded in Java or BASIC.
Contributing test cases is highly appreciated!
-> http
://qa.openoffice.org/qadevOOo_doc/index.html
The effort in writing test cases definitely need some
initial learning
of the framework. After this, each single test only needs
15 minutes
to an hour, depending on the complexity.Please contact our
QA team (see website above) if you are interested.
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*** Translating Examples to C++ (NEW!)
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A nice contribution would be to translate the Java examples
from the
Developers Guide to C++.
The effort will be about 1 hour and more, depending on the
size of
the example.
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*** Becoming an Official OOo Contributor
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If you want to provide us with source code or documentation,
we need a
copyright assignment:
-> http://ww
w.openoffice.org/contributing.html
Please read this document to learn about how and why.
This copyright assignment is NOT needed for reporting
issues,
CodeSnippets or answers on the mailing list.
And then be welcome to the OOo Development team!
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If you have ideas what the next issue of APIOOo TOPIC
should be
about, please contact miopenoffice.org!
Juergen+Andreas
--
other resources regarding this list:
OOo project website: http://api.openoffice.org
devapi.ooo rules: http://api.o
penoffice.org/listrules.html
APIOOO newsletTER: http://api.open
office.org/NewsLetter/
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