I recently wanted to get the list of all file types handled by OpenOffice.org using the API. Of course I wanted to get their internationalized names. I discovered a very interesting service while browsing the API reference: com.sun.star.document.TypeDetection. Here is a sample of StarBasic code getting the names of the file types.

Sub TestTypes

    oTypeDetection = createUnoService( "com.sun.star.document.TypeDetection" )
    aNames = oTypeDetection.ElementNames
    sTypes = ""
    For i = 0 To UBound( aNames )
        oType = oTypeDetection.getByName( aNames( i ) )
        sTypes = sTypes & getUIName( oType ) & chr( 10 )
    Next i

    MsgBox sTypes

End Sub

Function getUIName( oType As Variant )
    sName = ""
    i = 0
    While ( sName = "" And i <= UBound( oType ) )
        If ( oType( i ).Name = "UIName" ) Then
            sName = oType( i ).Value
        End If
        i = i + 1
    Wend

    getUIName( ) = sName
End Function

I hope that this could help you.