Re: Python

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:16:46PM +1000, pasty wrote:
> Hi,
> Not sure if this is the best place to ask these questions, but here goes.
> As new comer to Gnumeric, I'm trying hard to leave Microsoft's Excel 
> behind.  Unfortunately, I've become rather reliant on a number of functions 
> written in visual basic.  Transfering excel workbooks really means re- 
> writing a number of functions.
> When adding user defined functions, is it best to write python plugin 
> modules (as described in the help manual) or is there another method?
> If python plugins are the most suitable, is there a way of having gnumeric 
> re-read the python plugin file without closing and re-opening?
>
> Functions written in python plugin work real well.  It would be nice 
> however, if Gnumeric could load a python function definition set written 
> for a specific workbook, maybe embedded in the Gnumeric file, or saved to 
> the same directory with the workbook's name and the .py file extension
> Can user defined functions be called by the button wigets?
>
> There is an entry in the Gnumeric manual under extending Gnumeric called 
> "defining new functions".  Is this page empty because the feature hasn't 
> been documented yet, or because the feature hasn't been implemented yet.

I suspect a misunderstanding here.  Adding global (non workbook
specific) _functions_ is possible.  What I'll bet you are looking
for are _procedures_ (aka macros).  What we support is adding new
evaluation functions to expressions.  For 1.3 we're planning to work
on our scripting interface and support macros properly.