Darren New wrote:
> Google "Excel vba interface" or "Excel com interface".

Or, come to think of it, fire up Excel and go into the help box and 
search for "vba".


-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:4727aac0$1@news.povray.org...

> (I guess it's kind of moot anyway. I don't have access to any
> programming language that supports COM. No, I classify VB as "joke"
> rather than "programming language"...)

C#?

You might also try F#. I haven't personally used it, but I think is a
language you might like, and it's built on the .NET framework.

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On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:44:40 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Or, come to think of it, fire up Excel and go into the help box and 
>search for "vba".

Or, while in Excel, [ALT}+[F11] to open the Visual Basic Editor, then [F2] to open the
Object Browser window, at least in Excel 2000.

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So... can anybody provide a high-level overview of the general structure 
and terminology of this stuff?

(All the documentation I found so far just shows examples in C - which 
means nothing to me.)

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In article <4727abda$1@news.povray.org>, 
nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom says...

> > (I guess it's kind of moot anyway. I don't have access to any 
> > programming language that supports COM. No, I classify VB as "joke" 
> > rather than "programming language"...)
> 
> Javascript running under Windows Scripting Host (and under IE with very
 
> low security settings) can use COM. PHP has a COM extension too, 
> although I have never tried it.
> 
It should be noted that support for COM in those does **not** include 
event management. That is only supported if you are running it IE, since 
it has all the fancy bits in it that allow you to call Invoke. This is 
apparently intentional, though I never quite got how knowing that you 
fracking clicked on a button is more dangerous than a COM object that 
tries to format your hard drive... I just don't get how disallowing 
events did anything but make it a pain to do anything (though it does 
work in IE, since IE supports an object event handler system, which lets 
you link your own script function to the event. Its why, if you look in 
the help for it, you will find that there are commands to both "link" an 
event (don't remember the name of that) and a "GetRef" command used to 
get the internal entry point to your script function, so that when the 
event happens that function will be called. But without IE's event 
manager, the linking command just generates a, "This command not 
available", type error. :p

Its basically a serious pain in the rear. You can get past it by 
introducing what is known as a ATL Bridge. Basically, ATL give more 
direct support to the functions that are "needed" to tell Event A to 
call your own code/script function. The problem is, the event cycle is a 
bit wacky. Basically, you click the button, for example, it generates a 
system level event, which is sent to your application, which is **then** 
supposed to be sent to the event handler that is keeping track of who to 
call when the event is received. Things like VB, MFC and Windows 
Scripting Host, all pretty much leave you hosed, since they either don't 
provide a way to *create* the needed link, or to even inform the object 
that it should generate the event. But in some like MFC, the "event" is 
not identified as one that belongs to your program, so is tossed back to 
the OS, to die in obscurity, instead of being passed on to any handler 
you "may" have. VB is a bit nicer, since you can trap arbitrary events 
(harder to do in MFC, and impossible in WSH), but since you can't talk 
to the core layer of the object to tell it that you "want" the event in 
the first place, it won't tell you that it happened, let alone allow 
your application to do anything about it.

Bloody mess...

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:4728ece4$1@news.povray.org...
> So... can anybody provide a high-level overview of the general 
> structure and terminology of this stuff?
>
> (All the documentation I found so far just shows examples in C - 
> which means nothing to me.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_object_model

Also - powershell from MS is free and does COM

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pan wrote:
> "Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
> news:4728ece4$1@news.povray.org...
>> So... can anybody provide a high-level overview of the general 
>> structure and terminology of this stuff?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_object_model

Already read it. It's one of Wikipedia's less helpful articles. (Ditto 
for all that .NET stuff.)

> Also - powershell from MS is free and does COM 

Um... OK. Maybe they have some documentation I can use...

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Invisible wrote:
> Um... OK. Maybe they have some documentation I can use...

I think it's more like, now that you know what it is (namely, an API for 
communication between independent objects via an API-like interface), 
what's your actual question? :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Um... OK. Maybe they have some documentation I can use...
> 
> I think it's more like, now that you know what it is (namely, an API for 
> communication between independent objects via an API-like interface), 
> what's your actual question? :-)

 From Wikipedia's article, it seems that COM's idea of what the terms 
"object", "class" and "method" mean is somewhat different from the usual 
OO terminology. (Or Wikipedia is outright incorrect, which is of course 
not impossible.) Can anybody clarify?

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> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> Um... OK. Maybe they have some documentation I can use...
>>
>> I think it's more like, now that you know what it is (namely, an API 
>> for communication between independent objects via an API-like 
>> interface), what's your actual question? :-)
> 
>  From Wikipedia's article, it seems that COM's idea of what the terms 
> "object", "class" and "method" mean is somewhat different from the usual 
> OO terminology. (Or Wikipedia is outright incorrect, which is of course 
> not impossible.) Can anybody clarify?

It is a bit different from normal OO terms. Just wait until you get to 
the "containment/delegation and aggregation" part (replaces uses of 
inheritance), that's really screwed up.

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