World: r3wp

I've used rasdial very successfully under Windows Xavier.

How can I set the current directory as the active one when I create 
an XLS object with COMLib? At the moment I need to provide fully-qualified-filenames 
to open a file.

Robert, are you talking about COMLib-anton ?

If so, there was a problem that really bugged me, which I couldn't 
find a good way to avoid. That is, the current directory would be 
where the com2rebol.dll was (or something like that). So you can 
see the demos have to reference files relative to the parent directory.

But I can see in the word-open-save.r demo I have done this:

	do/args %../COMLib.r [
		...

  word_doc: GetObject [word_obj ".Documents.Open(%s)" to-local-file 
  clean-path %demos/word-open.doc]

Anton, yes.

I solved it the same way with to-local-file works, but not elegant.

Yes, not elegant. I'm sorry.

Anton, how would one do the example here 

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=9815&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

In particular, this line

Set doc = Stardesktop.loadComponentFromURL("private:factory/swriter", 
"_blank", 0, args)

where args has been defined as Dim args()

the func is described here http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/frame/XComponentLoader.html

Is it possible to write a windows "service" (a program running as 
a service) with rebol?

doc has software to do this

it's part of the Cheyenne distribution

Thanks Graham.

Windows Services support: http://softinnov.org/rebol/nt-services.shtml

Thanks Doc

Dunno what's changed by Skype but REBOL Skype Sms texting is working 
again on Vista.

Hi, just getting my hands back on control Excel via ComLib. How do 
I get a value back?

I saw there is GetString, GetInteger etc. but don't know how to use 
it.

The Comlib.r code states this in the comment sections:

		;GetString [xlApp ".ActiveSheet.Cells(1,10)"]

But doesn't seem to work...

Ok, as so often, posting my problems seems to enlighten me to get 
it fixed.

I was changing a file in an other directory not the one the base 
script was in...

Trying to get a decimal! into an excel cell. I use:


sendValue excel-app ".ActiveSheet.Cells(%d,%d) = %f" reduce [row 
col val]


But this leads to strange content. What's the C-type of a Rebol decimal!

From the DLL docs it's float/double but doesn't seem to work...

Ok, it's not %f in DistHelper/COMLib but %e...

But now I get garbage to Excel...

Comlib.r is missing a way to pass decimal! / floats. I extended it. 
Seems to work at least with XLS.

Robert, on a recent project my app creates an xml file formatted 
with xml that Excel understands. It's a hassle but you can make very 
pretty spreadsheets that do just about all the formatting (so it's 
a far cry from CSV). I start with creatinga very small excel spreadsheet 
then saving as an xml file. Then I check out how they do the formatting. 
You can create multiple tabbed spreadsheets very easily this way. 
Doesn't do graphs though.

James, this is EXACTLY how I do this type of thing.  Let the tools 
do all the examples...

Yes! Being an experimental physicist it always strikes me as funny 
that we don't have a branch called "experimental computer science". 
Computers may be predictable, but humans (you know, that design XML 
formats, or have a ship cut an Internet cable in the Pacific, or....) 
are not.

Well, I really like COMLib. It's pretty straight forward and the 
COM sutff is one of the better things MS did. It works and is a pretty 
simple concept.

And, I not just need to generate XLS files I need to read data from 
XLS files as well that don't use an XML format.

Point taken. Robert.

Any idea how I can get rid of the "Do you want to save changes" dialog 
when I close an XLS workbook?

I hate VBA... I tried:
 sendValue 	 excel-app ".DisplayAlerts = %s" "False"
and

 objectMethod excel-app ".ActiveWorkbook.Close(SaveChanges:=False)"


both with no effect. To be more specific, the effect is that ComLib/Disphelper 
just exit.

Have you already consulted http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213428/EN-US/
? Maybe that's what you're looking for.


The trick seems to be to do set ThisWorkbook.Saved = True, so that 
Excel responds as though the workbook has already been saved and 
no changes have occurred since that last save.

I did. And I solved it. The problem is that ComLib didn't knew about 
logic! and XLS uses TRUE/FALSE as logic value not as string.

Now it works.

Hi, I'm again struggeling with XLS automation via ComLib.

I want to do:

VBA-Code: ActiveSheet.Copy After:=Workbooks(2).Sheets(3)
	

And I use:
								

objectMethod excel-app ".ActiveSheet.Copy After:=Workbooks(%d).Sheets(%d)" 
reduce [workbook worksheet]



But this doesn't work. XLS creates a new document with the copy worksheet 
inserted. Looks like the stuff after .Copy isn't recognized. Any 
idea?

Graham asked, when using COMLib-Anton, can you pass a decimal to 
Excel?

Well, looking at the demos/excel.r file, you can see integers being 
passed in with %d in the format string.

That file worked for me last time I tried it, as I noted in the script 
header. That would have been on WinXP.

Yes, and %d is an integer mask so decimals passed to it end up as 
integers

I have extened the excel dialect to handle decimal! as well. The 
code in the dialect looks like this:


                | ['set | 'change] opt 'cell set row integer! set col integer! set 
                val [string! | integer! | decimal!] (
                		; ? val
                		; print [row col]
                		switch type?/word val [
                			string!  [
                				; filter all illegal characters
                				replace/all val {"} "'"
                				replace/all val {,} " -"
                				replace/all val newline "; "

                    sendValue excel-app ".ActiveSheet.Cells(%d,%d) = %s" reduce [row 
                    col val]
                			]

                   integer! [sendValue excel-app ".ActiveSheet.Cells(%d,%d) = %d" reduce 
                   [row col val]]

                   decimal! [sendValue excel-app ".ActiveSheet.Cells(%d,%d) = %e" reduce 
                   [row col val]]
                		]

I will update the excel dialect on my homepage as soon as I'm back 
home.

This looks like Benjamin's original comlib ?

I'm not sure, as I blended the two and made some changes. What I 
remember is, that I had to add support for decimal! to the excel 
dialect I used.

Has anyone used these dialects to generate server side Excel spreadsheets 
and then returned them to the browser?

No, but if you want to do this, create HTML files with XLS endings 
using TABLE. Excel will magically load these as normal XLS files 
;-)