From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Sat Aug 30 2003 - 13:39:55 EDT
Dom,
Thanks for the reply you sent me (some time ago)! Sorry to have waited this
long to acknowledge / respond -- I still have to let some of it sort of
settle in. ;-)
On Thursday 31 July 2003 04:16 pm, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> I think that the scripting bits have always been
> there. I did amend it, suggesting that we should use
> SWIG so that we get like 10 language bindings "for
> free" after we implement a C plugin API. This includes
> PERL, Python, Java, C#, Ruby, Scheme, and ML as some
> popular languages.
>
> > question: In any case, my question is about being
> > able to write "internal"
> > macros that would let me do one of the
> > (non-programming) approaches to
> > collapsible outlining. (Basically, internal macros
> > would need to be able to
> > distinguish different text styles (with heading
> > attributes at various levels
> > vs. without heading attributes at all) and apply and
> > unapply a hidden text
> > attribute to the text to be collapsed. Is the macro
> > capability to support
> > that envisioned in 2.2?
>
> There doesn't need to be a distinction between an
> external and an internal scripting API. It might be
> useful to have a "simplified" API for the casual user,
> yes. Then again, this is probably something that you
> can build inside of your scripting language, wrapping
> various abiword calls into "more useful" ones that do
> what you want it to. Or one could write more complex
> calls inside of AbiWord that do some of the "more
> useful/popular" types of thing that you'd like to do.
>
> The only difference I really envision is that there
> will be an 'AbiApp* new_abi_app()' call so that
> external scripts can start a new AbiWord instance (in
> addition to 'AbiApp* get_abi_app()').
>
> I don't expect to have anything like what you want as
> part of the standard API, Scripting API, or whatever
> you want to call it. You might be able to iterate
> through the various blocks inside of AbiWord. You can
> get the "style" attribute, and see if it's "Heading*"
> or not. If not, you could append "display:none;" to
> its "props." I don't envision this being any easier
> than the current C++ approach, unless someone steps up
> to write some convenience routines.
Ok, I was just (still) hoping to avoid learning C++ ;-). (My current language
interest is Python, I'm thinking that learning Python might even be a
stepping stone to learning C++.)
> > question: Is there a way to apply a new template to
> > an ABiWord document (to
> > change multiple styles simultaneously)?
>
> Format->Style->Import Styles. Works for ABW and DOC
> documents right now, and maybe RTF too.
Hmm, I don't see this in AbiWord 1.9.0 (Knoppix 3.2) or on the most recent
Windows (stable) version I've downloaded (some time ago). Must be in one of
the more recent versions or on the way -- or should I file (look for) a bug?
Randy Kramer
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