OOo Extensions Project Hot Topics

After the OOo 2.0.4 annoucement that provides new extensions improvement such as licencing and new extension .oxt, the extensions team is hard working setting up an ecosystem for developping extensions

The main points actually worked on are

• Translation toolkit : A long discussion has occured focusing mainly on the backend storage format (xml xcu OOo file format, po files, java properties format). While this is important the main focus regarding Extensions usability is to give developpers a cool and simple API to use and translators of every skill level a versatile tool to provide and test translations
  It seems something is beeing studied at Basic IDE level but this rather a new sun internal project and will be limited to dialogs translation on first release. This may be available in OOo 2.2+ and probably not downward compatible.
  As a short term solution, our great Paolo proposed a solution based on pyUNO and xcu file. it is a cool way to go as it will allow extension developpers to have their work being used in OOo 2.x versions and this toolkit can even be enhanced to support other file format.
• About deploying extensions, the actual command line based utility is rather secure but restrictive. It does not allow to use an existing library repository. The problem is that it sometimes behave too silently when de-activating some extensions. Some ideas (use of xlc files) and context restrictions are being discussed to see if something can be improved for user experience
• A new tool demonstrated at OooCon is now available - This NetBeans plugin is really cool and i think that an Eclipse one will also be available :) 
• A small team is setup for the web site - A great Art design work is being started by Ben while Jean-Pierre setups a first prototype. This will be available really soon as an alpha proposal release when server will have required tools
  

if you wish to join the Extensions team, please do. Everybody is welcomed, just tell us, we will find something for you ;)

Speaking about extensions, one as to note the new Sun Java OOo Blogger. This reminds me Caolan's work from last year. The same goal, done and freely available in pyUNO. It is freely available as a study case and use. I bet originality will be for the next extension. But if you want to fund SUN for supporting OOo, it is a way ...

At OOo level, a new team is built for a Creative Commons licence inclusion in OOo documents. If you whish to help visit them on their dedicated mailing list

And for volunteers, I give here some rough ideas for extensions. But, everything else is possible :)

• an impress autostart : OOo does not have a pps-like file format. The idea is to define a DocumentInfo.Info1 parameter, check it though a resident extension on impress file opening and auto start the presentation (level required : easy/medium)
• on-the-fly translation : on the model of OOoWikipedia, retreive the translation of an hilighted word and display it in OOo (level required : easy)
• S5 is a web based light format - create an assistant/filter allowing to export impress files to this format. mainly XSLT stuff but a wizard can also be setup (level required : skilled) 
• logo is a cool language for children to start with. OOoDraw API could be used to embedd such a tool. Note that an engine already exists in python, so using pyUNO could be a good idea
  

These tools creation and how they can be packaged as Extensions can be discussed on users@extensions.openoffice.org. The core part, the api use and help remains on dev@api.openoffce.org mailing list

I propose you to visit our enriched Wiki (some part are even being translated but any mediawiki tool pointer for multilingual support would be great) and join us on dev@extensions.openoffice.org to build the ecosystem, users@extensions.openoffice.org to start building extensions and #ooo-ext freenode IRC channel for a live chat