Automating OpenOffice: Customizing Key Strokes
How to Add Assign Macros in OpenOffice.org Documents
Jul 3, 2008
One of the great strengths of OpenOffice.org is that even novice users can start customizing the application for their own (or other peoples') needs. Typically the process will be something like:
- create macros to automate any laborious or complex tasks
- customize OpenOffice so that any other users can run the macros with the minimum of effort (and, hopefully, without any knowledge of the macros at all)
These OpenOffice customizations can be one of four types:
- Events such as
- Open Document
- Save Document As
- Keyboard - adding functionality to spare keys and keystroke combinations such as
- F3
- Shift+F9
- Menus - items can be added to existing (or even new) menus
- Toolbars - items can be added to the OpenOffice toolbars
The act of customization is carried out through OpenOffice's "Customize" dialog (which is accessible from the main menu by clicking on "Tools" and then "Customize"). However, there are limitation to what can be customized through the dialog; for example it is not possible to assign the keystrokes Control+P to anything other than printing the document. For that the spreadsheet developer must turn back to writing some Basic code; and that code involves introducing an OpenOffice key handler.
Adding a Key Handler to an OpenOffice.org Document
There are two steps to creating an OpenOffice key handler:
- create a listener - this is a background process that monitors the application events (in this case key presses)
- create the macros that will run when the keys are actually pressed
Fortunately the code to add the listener is not too complicated:
Option Explicit
Global oKeyHandler
Sub AddKeyHandler
oKeyHandler = CreateUnoListener("KeyHandler_","com.sun.star.awt.XKeyHandler")
thisComponent.currentController.addKeyHandler(oKeyHandler)
End Sub
This piece of code is simple, but carries out some key jobs:
- defines the object oKeyHandler and gives it a global scope - meaning that it will be accessible to all macros in the module (the container for all of the macros)
- creates the listener and provides it with the prefix "KeyHandler_" - this is the prefix that must be used by the macros to be run when a key is pressed; there are three such macros:
- keyPressed
- keyReleased
- disposing
The first of the macros (and the one that will do all of the important work) has to named in a specific way:
- it must start with the prefix supplied to the CreateUnoListener method
- it must end with the suffix "keyPressed"
The code is therefore:
Function KeyHandler_keyPressed(oKeyEvent as new com.sun.star.awt.KeyHandler) As Boolean
If oKeyEvent.modifiers = com.sun.star.awt.KeyModifier.MOD1 Then
If oKeyEvent.keyCode = com.sun.star.awt.Key.P Then
KeyHandler_keyPressed = True 'Turn off default action
msgbox "No; I won't print today, thank you!"
End If
End If
End Function
This macro processes the key presses passed to it, and there are two types of key types that it's looking for:
- Key Modifiers - these are the shift, control (MOD1) and Alt (MOD2) keys
- Key Codes - the alphanumeric value of the key pressed (A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, etc; the complete list can be found on the OpenOffice web site)
The macro above simply looks for MOD1 and P (i.e. control+P), and then outputs a message box instead of the default print dialog; while the next macro simply returns the application to it's default state (i.e. just waiting for another key to be input):
Function KeyHandler_keyReleased(oKeyEvent as new com.sun.star.awt.KeyHandler) As Boolean
KeyHandler_keyReleased = False
End Function
And the third macro doesn't actually do anything at all - it's there for completeness and that's all:
Sub KeyHandler_disposing
End Sub
Removing a Key Handler from an OpenOffice.org Document
As well as adding a key hander, it may be useful to remove it as well - for example, the user may want to disable Control+P sometimes, but enable it at others; so this final macro does just that - removes the handler:
Sub RemoveKeyHandler
thisComponent.currentController.removeKeyHandler(oKeyHandler)
End Sub
The end result is a simple, but effective, set of macros that extends the users ability to customize OpenOffice even further.
