World: r3wp

I don't think Ben is working on comlib at present

What he said he was going to do was to find a way to provide comlib 
support for those without pro.

I think /PRO is bad idea...but I said that many times :)

Ben just emailed me, so good news.

Anton, can your version do all the demos that Ben posted ?

All except the WORD open_save.r demo. But I don't think Ben's could 
do that on my system either.

what does that one do ?

I'm pretty sure most of the demos worked as advertised ...

Don't worry, Ben and I are going to work together.

Hello im back,  im sending sources and demos to Anton. he's going 
to post sources and documentations on his site.

Excellent.

check you'r mailbox sourcer shold be there by now

i mean sources, also i whant to thank you all for giving you'r attention 
in this project.

Got it, Ben, very good.

Is there anyone who can donate webspace (say 10MB) and set up FTP 
access for Ben and I ?

Hmm, maybe Sunanda will give us a directory on rebol.org ? eg. www.rebol.org/COMLib/ 
 ?  :)

Just used comlib to make Photoshop produce my xmas cards controlled 
by Rebol. Worked pretty well too. I did have a couple of problems, 
and worked around them but I'm don't know if it was PS or comlib. 
Assuming PS at the moment.

Anton, re webspace, send me an email - what do you need to do? private 
ftp space or public web and for how long?

Brett, I've noticed many of the code examples have small delays in 
between each command (eg. wait 0.1) which supposedly makes it more 
reliable. Don't know if that can help you.

Thanks for your offer, but Yeksoon has kindly set up a temporary 
website for us, and will set up a more permanent one after some server 
upgrading.

Just on those issues I mentioned maybe someone here knows:


Issue 1 - CreateObject won't start Photoshop but does work with Microsoft 
products like Access, Excel, Word...

>> obj_application: createObject "Photoshop.Application"
--------------------------------------------------
ERROR:
--------------------------------------------------
Member:   Photoshop.Application
Function:     CreateObject
Error In:     CreateObjectEx
Error:    %1 is not a valid Win32 application.
Code:     800700c1
Source:   Application
CODE: -2147024703
--------------------------------------------------


If I start PS by hand or use Call from REBOL then there is no problem. 
It is starting the process which is the issue.

Issue 2 - Photoshop method PrintOut only works the first time, subsequent 
calls are silently ignored.


I had a loop so my workaround was to Quit photoshop programmatically, 
then restart it with Call - bit of a sledgehammer but I generated 
my cards :)

Not a big issue for me now, but would be good to solve these for 
next time.

P.s both of these I tried at console and I think I did try a wait 
at the time.

Yes, CreateObject assumes the application is already running. In 
the case of MS office apps, they are probably already running in 
the background somehow, or the interface supports those apps.

Ok thanks for that. Is there something I can use to start the application 
apart from REBOL's Call command?

On issue 2, I've done some more testing this time with VB script 
and same result - just one print.  However, trying a different printer 
- multiple prints work using VB script and REBOL/comlib. So it may 
be the printer driver that is causing me problems.

I don't know, I haven't discovered this yet. I will of course put 
it into a demo when / if  I do discover a way to start the app.

Any updates on the comlib ?

I forked and did a lot of cleaning and rebolifying, but I think Benjamin 
must be real busy or on holiday, because I've been waiting for his 
email for a while. Also, the more I worked on it, the more I wanted 
to check the basis of code. Maybe there is better library than disphelper 
to base on ? I don't know because I didn't check yet. Anyway, I will 
most l likely continue with my fork as is.

Not going to do anything on that for a few days, I think.

Was there a solution to Brett's problem ?

no news there.

Not COM related, but I had similar problems with programmtic control 
of Acrobat.

.

Yes Brett - CreateProcess

First release of  COMLib-anton    (Benjamin Maggi's COMLib, reengineered)
http://home.wilddsl.net.au/anton/rebol/os/windows/COMLib/

What changes ?

To see some changes, click on Browse Files, then docs/convert-ben-to-anton.txt

Anton, how stable is your fork?

is it more stable than Benjamin's ? Although I can't say I've had 
any problems with his.

I am confident in it. That is why I have published. I worked really 
hard for the last couple of weeks. I feel the new API is not likely 
to change very much from here.

I have removed the use of callbacks, so there is no chance for indeterminate 
behaviour due to the asynchronous operation of callbacks. Exceptions 
are now thrown as rebol errors, so you can use standard rebol error 
checking.

I have scrutinized the API and cleaned it up, removing seemingly 
arbitrary divergences from DispHelper function names.

Ok.  I'll have to test it in the weekend.

Also, I am here to support it fully.

COMlib requires a /Pro license, right?

Yes, to access external library.

ok

(maybe it would be worth mentioning to avoid too much excitement?) 
:-)

why? will not RT release library interface as any other normal language, 
for free? ;-)