Basic IDE

Defines the settings for the Basic IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to help edit macros in Basic.

This feature is experimental and may produce errors or behave unexpectedly. To enable it anyway, choose - Collabora Office - Advanced and select Enable experimental features checkbox.

To access this command...

Choose - Collabora Office - Basic IDE.

Code Completion

This feature helps the Basic programmer to complete the code, saves extensive typing and helps to reduce coding errors.

Enable code completion

Display methods of a Basic object. Code completion will display the methods of a Basic object, provided the object is a UNO extended type, and the option "Use extended types" is also on. It does not work on a generic Object or Variant Basic types.

When a variable is a UNO interface or structure, a list box appears when pressing the dot after a variable's name (like aVar. [list box appears] ). Its methods and variables are listed in the list box, displayed just below. You can navigate between the suggested methods and variables with the arrow keys. To insert the selected entry, press the Enter key or double click on it with the mouse. To cancel the list box, press the Esc key.

When typing the method's name, and pressing the Tab key once, it will complete the selected entry, pressing the Tab key again will cycle through the matches with the longest prefix. For example, when aVar.aMeth is typed, it will cycle through aMeth1, aMethod2, aMethod3 entries, and other entries are not hidden.

Example:


    Dim aPicker As com.sun.star.ui.dialogs.XFilePicker

is a valid variable definition, its methods can be accessed via the dot (".") operator:


    aPicker.getDisplayDirectory()

Code Suggestion

These are coding helpers for the Basic programmer.

Autocorrection

Correct cases of Basic variables and keywords while typing. Collabora Office Basic IDE will modify the typing of Basic statements and Basic variables of your code to improve coding style and readability. Modifications of the code are based on the program's variables declarations and on the Collabora Office Basic commands parsed.

Example:


    Dim intVar as Integer

and when writing Intvar, will be corrected to intVar to match the case existing in the declaration of intVar .

Basic keywords are also automatically corrected (the list of the keywords is grabbed out from the parser).

Examples:

Integer, String, ReDim, ElseIf, etc...

Autoclose quotes

Automatically close open quotes. Collabora Office Basic IDE will add a closing quote each time you type an opening quote. Handy for inserting strings in the Basic code.

Autoclose parenthesis

Automatically close open parenthesis. Collabora Office Basic IDE will add a closing parenthesis “)” each time you type an opening parenthesis “(“.

Autoclose procedures

Automatically insert closing statements for procedures. Collabora Office Basic IDE will add a statement End Sub or End Function after you type a Sub or Function statement and press Enter.

Language Features

Use extended types

Allow UNO object types as valid Basic types. This feature extends the Basic programming language standard types with the Collabora Office UNO types. This allows the programmer to define variables with the right UNO type and is necessary for the code completion feature.

Example:


    Sub Some_Calc_UNO_Types
    REM A spreadsheet object
        Dim oSheet As com.sun.star.sheet.XSpreadsheet
        oSheet = ThisComponent.getSheets().getByIndex(0)
    REM A cell object
        Dim oCell As com.sun.star.table.XCell
        oCell = oSheet.getCellByPosition(0,0)
    End Sub

The use of UNO Extended Types in Basic programs can restrain interoperability of the program when executed in other office suites.

Basic IDE