World: r3wp

http://home.wilddsl.net.au/anton/rebol/os/windows/COMLib/files.html

TTS worked, the ms agent just had the bubble.

I have some old ms agent code around somewhere that I used with LFReD, 
along with a dialect.. I'll see if i can find it.

The MS TTS is pretty old technology.. Sounds like Vista may has much 
better speech recognition and a new TTS.  Should check out the beta.

Righto, thanks :)

We'll find out what the difference is.

COM with PHP is soo easy...  drop this into a page on your local 
server.. 

<?

$word=new COM("word.application") or die("Cannot start word for you");
print "Loaded word version ($word->Version)\n";
$word->visible =1;
$word->Documents->Add();
$word->Selection->Typetext("Dit is een test");
$word->Documents[1]->SaveAs("burb ofzo.doc");
$word->Quit();
?>

Want Macro support.. ? 

<?
$obj = new COM("AutoItX3.Control");
$obj->CDTray ("H:", "open");
$obj->Sleep (1000);
$obj->CDTray ("H:", "close");
?>

Not to be critical, but the php syntax is much clearer.

Yes, you can do the chaining of objects easily, and pass args to 
functions directly, without using the printf-style syntax.

I am quite sure I can do better with rebol, but I would have to turn 
DispHelper inside out to find out the way. As it is, I have left 
DispHelper untouched.

How RT manages to charge for library access I'll never understand 
(even though I paid for it .. once).

Looks like you just set the .TTSModeID

Anton, if you made it with the OL connection let me know.

.. but when I set TTSModeID it doesn't work. I am not sure if I am 
using the right TTSModeID or if I am passing it correctly...

Robert, I'm extracting Outlook Calendar Appointments and Contacts. 
Just rudimentary at the moment, though. I haven't figured out how 
to surely extract all the properties.

And  I want to import those into IOS/xpeers :-) so that we can sync 
to OL. Maybe even in both ways.

I will publish what I have in the next day or two.

Here's TTS in PHP.. 

<?
$voice = new COM("SAPI.SpVoice");
$voice->Speak("Hello, lets have a conversation");
?>

tts: CreateObject "Sapi.SpVoice"
CallMethod [tts ".Speak(%s)" "Hello, let's have a conversation"]

pretty similar in COMLib.

wouldn't it be prettier with:

tts: CreateObject [Sapi SpVoice]
tts/call [Speak "Hello, let's have a conversation"]

just to make the syntax more smooth and REBOLish... :-)

Hmm... yes. Of course, if I could just choose the syntax I would 
make it much better. For now, still in learning mode.

Terry, I found some Agent code in HAL 4000 package. Looks pretty 
similar to other demos I have seen. I don't see what exactly I'm 
doing wrong there. I am very suspicious about the TTSModeID setting 
not working. I'll have to follow that up at some stage.

Thanks for your test.

Does the ado stuff work with this new beastie? http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ctp_sqleverywhere.mspx
.

No idea. Do you need it ?

I guess the question is: does COMLib work with ADO.NET ?

I think that depends on whether ADO.NET supports the older ADO interface 
or not.

A better question is whether COMlib supports OLEDB, which is COM-based. 
SQL Everywhere works with OLEDB too.

Well, if it really is COM based, then I imagine it should work.

COMLib website update:
Added outlook-calendar.r and outlook-contacts.r demos.
Fixed a few bugs in the main rebol interface file, COMLib.r
http://home.wilddsl.net.au/anton/rebol/os/windows/COMLib/

Robert, have a look at the outlook demos.

Not yet, sorry, was busy. I will. Thanks for posting this stuff.

And, as I don't use OL myself, I need to setup a test system.

Anton, is there a way to use Com and OneNote?

Not sure on this. The postings I find about the COM interface in 
OneNote a few years ago make the interface sound very lacking. Not 
sure it's much better now a few year have gone by or not.

Is there any way to get around the fact that Rebol faces are not 
native Windows "windows"? (i.e. don't have a handle on the system). 
Speech recognition command & control does not work with Rebol apps 
as long as that is the case and I need that...

Hmm.. the system port can be used to trap windows messages, perhaps 
if the command & control uses windows messages you can handle them 
that way... Can you give more information about the speech recognition 
software used ? (Is it MS software ? etc..)

The Speech Reco software is the one that comes built-in with Windows 
XP and Windows Vista (BTW, speech reco in Vista is much better than 
in XP). It analyzes widgets on the screen by running through all 
the windows handles (just about everything on a Windows screen is 
a window) and their labels, so it actually knows there's a menubar 
with a file menu on it so you can do things like say "Menu" "File" 
"Open" and it simply works for almost all native apps. It sends the 
equivalent commands by sending Windows messages to the windows. Problem 
is, since Rebol widgets do not have their own handles, the system 
never finds them, doesn't know they're there or that messages can 
be sent to them...

I think that's a tough one.

It would probably be easier to wrap the Speech API and use it directly.

That ouwl defeat the purpose; the idea is that the system works for 
all apps and that the apps themselves do not need to do anything 
to have it. Wrapping the API and then building it into every single 
app is not a feasible option. Do you think it's possible to adapt 
the Vid and RebGUI dialects to integrate with the SPeech API so everything 
built with those at least would work? (don't know much about how 
dialects work yet)

That's a big job, I'm afraid.

I don't know of anyone that's wrapped the ability to use native Windows 
controls in a REBOL dialect, though it *might* be possible. I think 
Cal (and maybe Cyphre or Oldes) have emebedded native OS windows 
in a View window. You might also be able to do it by creating your 
own windows, using the API, and then interacting with them behind 
the scenes. It would be a lot of work though, and be highly OS specific.

Yes, with the DLL interface you can theoretically create native-like 
GUI system according to your needs if you have enough time/motivation 
;)

While maintaining the flexibility of VID/rebGuI ?

If you write VID/RebGUI like dialect with binding to Windows native 
GUI why not? :)

hmm, not sure Cyphre, but you are the guru. Does windows has anything 
like face? If you would use only its windowing system, it is just 
what win32API allows you - dialogs, etc. - so no such flexibility, 
unless you would code View like compositing yourself

Cool :)

Pekr: You can create and control any windows dialog if you have the 
API available. (and this can be applied to any other OS feature). 
So it is possible to create native GUI controlable at the higher 
level of some dialect(simmilar to VID/Rebgui). People who are making 
common apps don't need to access it at face level but ofcourse such 
system would be based on face-like objects with methods related to 
Windows GUI elements etc.

the same could probably be done for OSX/Cocoa... it would solve many 
issues with GUI nativity in OSX.