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 Tools - Options - Office - Advanced and select Enable experimental features checkbox.
Choose Tools - Options - Office - Basic IDE.
This feature helps the Basic programmer to complete the code, saves extensive typing and helps to reduce coding errors.
Display methods of a Basic object. Code completion will display the methods of a Basic object, provided the object is a UNO extended type. Its 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()
These are coding helpers for the Basic programmer.
Correct cases of Basic variables and keywords while typing. 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 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...
Automatically close open quotes. Office Basic IDE will add a closing quote each time you type an opening quote. Handy for inserting strings in the Basic code.
Automatically close open parenthesis. Office Basic IDE will add a closing parenthesis “)” each time you type an opening parenthesis “(“.
Automatically insert closing statements for procedures. Office Basic IDE will add a statement End Sub or End Function after you type a Sub or Function statement and press Enter
.
Allow UNO object types as valid Basic types. This feature extend the Basic programming language standard types with the 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.