Installation: We suggest to use a version of ActiveTcl (because the vfs and memchan packages are used!) and to unpack all the packages besides tclunodocs in the lib directory of that installation. The tclunodocs "docs.zip" file has to be copied into the unospection-0.2 directory.
The packages are:The routines in this package are not intended for use for "normal" users.
That can be done by calling interface method from the UNO OpenOffice.org API. The calls return either handles (similar to objects) which can be used for further API method calls or the values for properties.
Setting properties is done the same way by using a handle and calling an interface method for setting properties with the appropriate values as parameters.
The routines in this package are intended for experienced users, which want to use advanced access to the API.
It is implemented with Itcl and contains classes for (hopefully) easily accessing writer, scalc, and simpress documents using classes which handle the low and middle level calls for accessing the API automaticly. It is based on tclurtp and tcluno
In this package you can find a lot of demos, which show the use of the classes and provide examples on how to use these classes. There is also a docs directory, which contains the documentation for these demos.
Our idea is, that most users should use these classes for accessing the API and they only have to dowload the tclurtp and tcluno packages as base for itcluno.
One use of unospection is to get the interfaces and methods including parameter infos (formal names and types) and return infos (type) of the methods, as well as the property names and types of the different parts of the OpenOffice.org components (documents, models, pages, tables etc.)
The second use of unospection is to use the results of introspection calls and to actively drive the OpenOffice.org server process in selecting methods typing in values for the parameters and execute the method calls. The results of the calls can directly be seen in the documents of the OpenOffice.org server process. That includes also setting of properties.
An aspect of using unnospection is to interactively figure out how to set for examle a property and use the automaticly logged calling sequence for adding it to some Tcl program, where you want to use that feature. The executed code in unospection can be saved to a file and you can cut and paste from that file to your progam.
Using unospection you can get the (SDK) documentation for every interface/method or property you find in the appropriate window by just clicking on the method/interface or property.
In the parameter window for calling a method you can also see the types of the parameters, in order to help you entering the correct values.
Another feature of unospection is, that you can search for a topic using regular expression search and you can get all the methods/properties whith respect to that pattern.
Some hints on how to use the unospection tool can be found here