Extensions

OOo Extensions project Please view the wiki usage guidelines before contributing.
Categories: Extensions Pages: Index Repository Development
Extensions on the main site View or edit this template.
Extensions in other languages: ES - FR - IT - JA - NL - OC - 中

All translated pages may not be up to date - Main language remains English

Apache OpenOffice Extensions

OpenOffice makes it possible to develop independent 3rd-party extensions. The categories of extensions range from Basic libraries, packages with Java/JavaScript or Python macros to more sophisticated extensions in the form of UNO components implemented in Java, C++ or Python. Even the last category of extensions subdivides into general UNO components providing new implementations for existing functional areas, or specialized components like Calc Add-Ins, Add-Ons, DataPilots, Chart Add-Ins, or linguistic components (e.g. Spellchecker, Hyphenator or Thesaurus).

The Extensions project provides

• Tools, guidelines and initial information to develop new functionality for OpenOffice
• Repository of existing Extensions: listing and classification
• Deployment to end-users

You can join us at

• #ooo-ext IRC channel
• API mailing list for building the extensions ecosystem. Send an email to api-subscribe@openoffice.apache.org to subscribe to the list.

Translating these pages

The Extension project has to be strongly bound to Native-Lang communities to relay any local third party development. So we warmly welcomed people interested in providing translations for the Add-ons and also for the documentation and pages of this site.

The naming convention proposed is to

• Create a new page taking the English page and add your language code as suffix (eg. Extensions_repository_fr)
• Put a link to this translated page at the top of the English page, with the language code
• Be aware that if you start a translation, it would be good to monitor it so that it remains as much in sync as possible

Some extension categories

• Calc Add-Ins provide new Calc built in functions which can be directly used over the normal function dialog in the Calc application.
• Add-ons describe components providing some new functionality and normally coming with an UI integration (e.g. new menu entries or complete new menues, new toolbars).
• DataPilots provide a new kind of data pilot which can be used directly over the DataPilot dialog in the Calc application.
• Chart Add-Ins provide a new chart type
• Linguistic components provide new implementations of known interfaces which can be used directly over the normal UI.
• Starting with OOo 2.0.4 we have support for non-code extensions (e.g. templates, autotexts)

References/Articles

• Generic UNO Interfaces for complex toolbar controls

• Addon Menu Toolbar Merging

• Popup Menu Controller

• Statusbar Controller

• OpenOffice.org Developers Guide

• Linux Journal: "Off the Wall: Macros and Add-ons"

• In this Wiki: a simple Calc AddIn and a complete AddIn and a screenplay formatting template