Re: Bonobo - storage formats ...

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo linuxave net>]

> On Sun, Nov 19, 2000 at 11:41:05AM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > It's worth pointing out that all these large desktop apps seem to be
> > built with COM-style components, including Mozilla, OpenOffice, and
> > MSOffice. At the moment we are not using Bonobo to anything like the
> > extent they are using components in those apps. 
> 
> As someone who is MSOffice-impaired, I'd be curious to know just how
> they are using components.  Just how fine-grained is the breakdown in
> an app like Word or Excel?  Is this level of granularity one that
> would be good to aim for in GNOME apps?
> 
one thing I've found very useful about MS Office (although I haven't used it
too much) is that all applications in the suite export their interface to
the outside world.

Some time ago, I was working in a project making software for lawyers, and
thanks to that, it was very easy to integrate MS Office into that application.
When we needed to open a word document, we just had to do something like
(sorry if it's not accurate, but I don't remember):

word = new Word.Application;
doc = word.openDocument("mydoc.doc");

and then, we could even access the internals of the document being edited, which
was very useful, since they were just template documents with some fields to
be filled in by the user.

This sort of thing allows for 3rd-party apps to make full use of the Office
suite.

cheers