OpenOffice.org OpenOffice - 3.0 Quick Start Guide download pdf (Page 373)

CreateUnoService accepts the name of a service and it tries to create

an instance of that service. On completion, the dispatcher variable

contains a reference to a DispatchHelper.

dispatcher = createUnoService("com.sun.star.frame.DispatchHelper")

Declare an array of properties. Each property has a name and a value.

In other words, it is a name/value pair. The created array has one

property at index zero.

dim args1(0) as new com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue

Give the property the name “Text” and the value “Andrew Pitonyak”,

which is the text that is inserted when the macro is run.

args1(0).Name = "Text"

args1(0).Value = "Andrew Pitonyak"

This is where the magic happens. The dispatch helper sends a dispatch

to the document’s frame (stored in the variable named document) with

the command .uno:InsertText. The next two arguments,

frame name

and

search flags

, are beyond the scope of this document. The last

argument is the array of property values to be used while executing

the command InsertText.

dispatcher.executeDispatch(document, ".uno:InsertText", "", 0, args1())

Finally, the end of the subroutine.

end sub

Creating a macro

I usually ask two questions before recording a macro:

1) Can the task be written as a simple set of commands?

2) Can the steps be arranged such that the last command leaves the

cursor ready for the next command?

A complicated example

I frequently copy rows and columns of data from a web site and format

them as a table in a text document. First, I copy the table from the web

site to the clipboard. To avoid strange formatting and fonts, I paste the

text into a Writer document as unformatted text. I reformat the text

with tabs between columns so that I can use Table > Convert > Text

to Table to convert to a table.

I inspect the text to see if I can record a macro to format the text

(remember the two questions that I ask). As an example, I copied the

FontWeight constants group from the OpenOffice.org web site. The

Chapter 13 Getting Started with Macros 373

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OpenOffice.org OpenOffice - 3.0 Quick Start Guide Page 373