Writer macros: How to save and restore the cursor position?

[setp]

I have a macro that updates the table of contents, and does some other operations.

Since updating the table of contents moves the cursor, I need to restore it to the position it was before performing that action. How can I accomplish this?

I’ve tried something like:

cursor = ThisComponent.CurrentController.getViewCursor()
cursorPrevPos = cursor.getPosition()

rem blahblah

oText = ThisComponent.getText()
oText.createTextCursorByRange(cursorPrevPos)

which obviously doesn’t work, because createTextCursorByRange is not the correct API (possibly, even not the correct concept).

Additional question: where is the API reference? I’ve struggled to find the documentation. For example, I’ve checked the wiki.openoffice.org site, but besides being OpenOffice rather than LibreOffice, it seems to be a collection of examples rather than an API reference.

[mikekaganski]

@setp

Additional question: where is the API reference?

api.libreoffice.org

[setp]

If I wanted to view, say, all the public methods of the ViewCursor class, where do I find this information?

[KamilLanda]

Use extension XRay or MRI

[mikekaganski]

In Development Tools (or in MRI).

The object returned from getViewCursor implements XTextViewCursor interface. That you can learn from the API documentation itself (going to the link above, opening IDL reference, and typing getViewCursor in the respective Search)

But that would not give you the full list of the methods/properties of that object - just the guaranteed minimum, i.e. what the API contract offers. The real object will implement also other interfaces, and their set may depend on the cursor position; and unless you want to read the source code, the best is to use introspection tools mentioned above.

[Lupp]

What’s your concept of “cursor position”?

There is a selection (per controller) mostly consisting of more than one text range. There also is one (may be the only one) of these ranges containing either no character and being indicated by a “blinking hair” or just one character in case of active overwrite mode. (I don’t know for sure if there are additional possibilities depending on special cases of text layout.)

The selection for the current controller of your current document you can get as (arbitrary name) cSel = ThisComponent.CurrentController.Selection
or cSel = ThisComponent.CurrentSelection.
The hair position or the mentioned single-character range should be cSel(0) then, but I dont know if the index 0 for this case is explicitly specified and assured somewhere.

A text range like myNextSel or a selection previously saved under that name you can select (again) for the current controller by ThisComponent.CurrentController.select(myNextSel).

[KamilLanda]

	cursor=ThisComponent.CurrentController.getViewCursor()
	cursorPrevPos=cursor.Start
	cursor.goToRange(cursorPrevPos, false)

[setp]

Thanks, this worked. Interestingly, updating the TOC seems to “lock” the cursor for the first attempt to move it, so I need to perform goToRange() twice (or anyway, precede goToRange with a position change call, like gotoEnd()).