I agree with Phil. Automation is completely independent of the language.
There are currently three solutions to do what you want, in FPC/Lazarus.
a - wait for the next full version of FPC. Automation is scheduled to be
included. COM is already available.
b - based on the COM layer, build a Word Interface unit to insert your
data into the word tables.
c - use Excel as an intermediate. Generate your tables there, and ask
your user or do a little VB code to load the Excel tables into the Word
document.
As a help, I am doing a port of Excel Automation of which a very
preliminary version is available here:
http://tcoq.free.fr/composants.html.
It uses the COM layer to provide an easier access to Excel Automation,
from FPC/Lazarus.
You can use it either as an example to do the b) option, or as a means
to do c) option.
Good luck,
Thierry
Mac Programmer wrote:
Automation has nothing to do with VBA. That's the whole point of
Automation, that it's language independent.
As Felipe rightly points out, many Laz users could profit from a
library for creating office documents. Ideally it would have 3 notable
characteristics:
(1) Can create any type of office document programmatically without a
particular office app or version being present. For word processing
documents, RTF is perfect since it's a text format that is well
supported by all word processors. FPC includes a unit for working with
RTF documents. I created a thin wrapper for it that allows you to
create RTF documents:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/XDev_Toolkit
(2) Can manipulate the resulting RTF file with the office app. On
Windows, Automation works great for that purpose. Your only real
challenges here are: (a) Figuring out a way to mark the place in the
document where the table should be inserted. You can do this in a
number of ways, for example if your app or your users create documents
based on a template that you provide, you could insert a hidden
bookmark in the template and look for this in the document's Fields
collection via Automation. (b) FPC 2.2.2 does not fully support
Automation yet, it appears.
You can insert text into a Word document from the clipboard via
Automation with something like this:
worddoc.ActiveWindow.Selection.Paste;
To insert an RTF file into the document:
worddoc.ActiveWindow.Selection.InsertFile(rtffilename,
ConfirmConversions:=False);
(3) Can do (2) across a variety of word processors in a
cross-platform, cross-app way. This includes Word, OO and Apple's
Pages. On Windows you can use Automation to manipulate both Word and
OO. On OS X you can use AppleScript to manipulate word processors that
include a dictionary of classes:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Multiplatform_Programming_Guide#Making_do_without_Windows_COM_Automation
Thanks.
-Phil
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