Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I am seeking some guidance as to which language I should commit to learning as I begin learning office automation with OpenOffice.org

As part of my job, I currently "develop" Excel spreadsheets and the occasional Access database for fellow employees. I have some small competency in VBA. As a long-time OpenOffice.org user, I would like to be able to do the same for friends and family working in volunteer organizations and who don't want to put out the money for legitimate copies of Microsoft Office.

In addition to automating data entry and manipulation, generating charts or reports, I would like to be able to learn to;

• offer remote updates for the code I've written, to fix bugs, provide additional functionality, via the web
  create custom line types and connectors in Draw (i.e. to match technical drawing symbols and legends)
  perhaps, if my abilities grow, interact with other open source software such as Thunderbird and finally,
  Possibly write some stand-alone programs as a hobby

I have no illusions of ever becoming a programmer, just a more skilled one-language automation hack than I currently am. If I'm to learn one language, using OpenOffice.org automation as my arena, which language should I commit to?

Thank you for your advice,
Jeff Van Allen

Choosing an Implementation Language

I have no illusions of ever becoming a programmer, ...

You won't get far with that attitude. This office is for the hardcore geeks.

Thanks Villeroy,
That link's just what I was looking for.

You won't get far with that attitude. This office is for the hardcore geeks.

I still call more senior people "Sir" or "Ma'am", and prefer to give professionals their due. To me the crews that code so much of the open source software I use are programmers, I'm many, many gallons of caffeine behind them.

Thanks again,
JvA