opensolver.org port

[geisler]

I am considering having my CS Seniors port the opensolver.org add-on for Excel to LibreOffice. Roughly speaking, it is a more polished and unrestricted interface to the COIN-OR solver that I believe already comes installed with LibreOffice. Does anyone have a feel for how much time and energy it takes to learn the UNO API well enough to take an existing Microsoft extension and to make it available for LibreOffice?

The extension should add two menu items: make model and solve. The make model item should bring up a form that allows users to enter cell ranges that describe a linear program. The solve item should pass the data provided in the form to the COIN-OR solver and modify the spreadsheet to reflect the solution to the model.

[Andrew-OpenSolverTeam]

This has been on our OpenSolver ToDo list for some years. Very keen to help this happen. Andrew (OpenSolver Team). PS: To answer question below, VBA source code is in the spreadsheet; this is how Excel does it

[hjek]

The solve item should pass the data provided in the form to the COIN-OR solver and modify the spreadsheet to reflect the solution to the model.

You could look at Capitalize.py from the PyUNO examples for an example of how to modify document content. There is a lot of boilerplate there, but I guess it could be abstracted away? From the documentation about development of extensions it looks like extensions are really just macros.

I’m confused about this OpenSolver though. It says it’s GPL, but all the downloads are just binaries (even including a LICENSE.txt with the GPL) so where’s the source?

[Ratslinger]

@hjek Just an FYI. Extensions can be more than just the macros. It can include other items such as additional menu or toolbar items, help files and more.