Macro Basics

Macros are small task-specific programs written in a language specific to OpenOffice.org. Macros can do things like open a file when you do a particular task, process data, or take your grandmother's credit cards and buy $3000 worth of cat toys. Pretty much whatever you want.

You can hook them up to events, things like clicking the mouse button or putting the pointer in a field, as well as just run'em.

There are a bunch of existing macros (see Figure A-1), as well, and the help provides a description of each one.

Figure A-1. Existing macros you can use

You can also write your own in the macro composition window. Here's one in Figure A-2 that when filled in will export a single drawing page from a loaded Draw or Impress document to a wmf , from the great folks on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists.

Figure A-2 Macro that exports a drawing from Draw or Impress to . wmf , from the OpenOffice.org archives

 XDrawPage thePage = ...;   String Url = ...;   Object xPorterService =   xMSF.createInstance("com.sun.star.drawing.GraphicExporterFilter");   XExporter xPorter = (XExporter)   UnoRuntime.queryInterface(XExporter.class, xPorterService);   XFilter xFilter = (XFilter) UnoRuntime.queryInterface(XFilter.class,   xPorterService);   XComponent xComp = (XComponent)   UnoRuntime.queryInterface(XComponent.class,thePage);   xPorter.setSourceDocument(xComp);   PropertyValue propertyvalues[] = new PropertyValue[2];   propertyvalues[0] = new PropertyValue();   propertyvalues[0].Name = "FilterName";   propertyvalues[0].Value = "WMF";   propertyvalues[1] = new PropertyValue();   propertyvalues[1].Name = "URL";   propertyvalues[1].Value = Url;   xFilter.filter(propertyvalues);