Hello. I'm a Delphi programmer, and have been doing all kinds of stuff with Delphi and COM. I noticed the gears DLL does register some minimal COM things, including a minimal type library that declares a dispinterface, fit for use by the scripting-engine in InternetExplorer.
I regret that I didn't find more of the gears API in IDL form there. If all, some, or only basic API calls to gears were properly defined in interfaces, I could use gears in Delphi applications, early bound. I was about to give it a go to use gears straight from Delphi with late binding, but that would increase the total development time, and involve an enormous amount of guessing, that I gave it up. Then again, gears might need the browser platform to connect with, which is missing in a default Delphi/COM application unless I load a bunch of stuff IE loads as well. I also regret that the description of the Type Library also states it's intended to drop it at some time in the future. How it would then be possible to keep providing gears for current IE versions is a mystery to me, but you may know stuff that I don't. I recognize that constructing and providing COM interfaces to gears elements is a lot of work, adds 'documentation and support surface', and is yet another process to synchronize the feature set with, but it would open the door to another set of developers (albeit a small one perhaps). Greetings Stijn Sanders
