Hi With Python 2 EOL as of 1 January 2020, we have little choice but to move to Python 3.
After a lot of hard work by me and Pedro, both of us relatively unfamiliar with Python, I am happy to report that using a system-provided Python 3 in Apache OpenOffice now works. The UNO/Python bridge and the Python script provider have been patched to support both Python 2 and 3, and all 3 sample Python macros that ship with AOO work with Python 3 too. More extensive testing (eg. main/pyuno/demo) has not been performed, but isn't in the build anyway and might be broken with Python 2 as well. It certainly works on FreeBSD and probably on Linux, please test other platforms. As I said only system-provided Python 3 works as this stage. Building an internal Python 3, as is required on Windows, does not work yet, and is extremely difficult to implement, as Python 3 requires a new Windows Platform SDK with MSVC >= 14 in order to build, which will probably lead to numerous build-related changes to all modules. This does need to happen at some stage anyway though. Also as per https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=123975#c9 we also need to release AOO 5.0 (a new major release) for an incompatible change of this nature. Along the way, I also looked at what it would take to improve the Python macro dialog, which never allowed creating, renaming, deleting or editing Python scripts, only running them (and to add them to an .odt file, you have to edit the ZIP file and add them manually). There are at least 3 separate implementations of scripting providers: the StarBasic one, the Java one (used for Java, BeanShell and Rhino (Javascript)), and the Python one. It's the Python one in main/scripting/source/pyprov/pythonscript.py that is missing features. By comparing it against the Java provider I managed to patch DirBrowseNode to implement XPropertySet and add a getPropertyValue() method which checks for the "Creatable" property and returns true, and this enables the (otherwise grayed out) "Create" button in the dialog, but then to implement the "Creatable" action in invoke() when the button is clicked seems rather difficult, and requires a low-level understanding of script URLs and content brokers and various other infrastructure. Damjan
