Porting notes
From Apache OpenOffice Wiki
Things to watch out for
- The mapping of the vba constants is different. Take for example the xlGuess constant, in VBA it's fully qualified name is Excel.XlYesNoGuess.xlGuess, in the helperapi it's com.sun.star.helper.constant.XlYesNoGuess.xlGuess and in oovbaapi it's org.openoffice.excel.XlYesNoGuess.xlGuess
- All objects in the helperapi extend HelperInterfaceAdaptor, nothing similar (yet) exists in oovbaapi so this can be ignored in the implementation
- There are a quite few helper classes in the helperapi project e.g. RangeHelper.java they shouldn't be confused with the actual implementation objects we wish to port.
- classes and idl files of the same name can exist in multiple namespaces and this can be confusing. Because the helperapi was written with both the word and excel api(s) in mind there can be classes that share a common implementation and interfaces e.g.
- com/sun/star/helper/calc/XShape.idl
- com/sun/star/helper/common/XShape.idl
- com/sun/star/helper/writer/XShape.idl
- Collections, these are handled differently see implementing a vba Collection in oovbaapi
- Every helperapi idl method defines BasicErrorException which allows and api method to transfer an error code and associated string paramater to basic.
