[xwiki-devs] Openoffice sdk client need openoffice runtime to run

[Sergiu Dumitriu]

Wang Ning wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I want to develop a component to handle office documents in xwiki. As we
> discussion before, I want to use openoffice api. I set a openoffice develop
> environment in my pc running ubuntu 8.04, and learn how to use openoffice
> api. Yes, The oo sdk is powerful to address office documents, MS doc, MS
> excel...
> But there's a problem. AFAIK, openoffice api need a openoffice local runtime
> or a remote server running openoffice. The whole openoffice runtime is 356M,
> more or less, so we shouldn't contain it in xwiki release. Hense, I think if
> we want the office importer run in a computer, the computer should have
> installed openoffice or configurate a remote openoffice server.
> 
> WDYT?
> I need some suggestion.
> Thanks.
> 

Well, we should not embed an OpenOffice instance in XWiki products, so 
we should:
- have *very* good installation notes on how to configure XWiki to work 
with an OpenOffice instance (ideally it should automatically detect if 
and where is OO installed).
- easily show/hide menu entries/actions, depending on whether OO is 
available or not.
- always display nice messages when the user somehow requests an 
operation that requires OO, and OO is not available.
-- 
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/