On 05/08/2011 12:39 AM, Darren New wrote:

> By the way, that was the link for implementing COM in your own code if
> you don't already have a COM interface built into your language. COM is
> basically a way of invoking object-oriented actions to a server (where
> "server" means your own or some other address space).
>
> If you already have a library, you invoke it from your scripting
> language by using whatever function the scripting language has for
> creating an object from a COM server, then you just call it like it was
> a local object.

I wasn't even asking "how do I write a program that invokes this COM 
thing?". I was asking, more basically, "how do you do useful stuff with 
COM?" As best as I can tell, COM lets you create "objects" and invoke 
"methods" on them... that's as far as I was able to figure out.

> In Tcl, for example, you can do this
> http://www.vex.net/~cthuang/tcom/chart.html
> to start a copy of Excel and then create a spreadsheet and chart the
> values in it.

I'm fairly sure I tried that [or similar] in Tcl and it didn't work.

> VB6 had all this stuff built in

Yeah, I figured.

I also figured that the only reason that you can (say) embed an Excel 
spreadsheet in a Word document is because both products are produced by 
the same company. The "normal" software that you and I write can't do 
such sophisticated things. As far as I can tell, anyway.

> In a language that supports COM already, it's not noticeably
> harder than writing or invoking DLLs.

I've yet to see a language that can invoke DLLs either...

> You may think it's difficult because you're trying to use it from
> Haskell, and COM is OO.

I'd be perfectly happy doing COM from, say, JavaScript. It's not that 
Haskell is the problem, it's that I can't see *anything* that speaks COM.

I get the feeling that the only way to solve this is to use some 
horrifically awful language like VB...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message