[plug] OpenOffice and Elite Central

[Ryan]

On Sat, 2003-07-05 at 11:30, Chris Caston wrote:
> Now the problem is that he called up yesterday and told me from one of
> the functions in Elite Central (http://www.elitepractice.com.au) MS
> Office (or perhaps just MS word) is required in order to print!

Some programs make direct use of the libraries shipped with Office.  You
can 'construct' documents by calling these libraries externally.  I've
done it in Delphi, and can only imagine it is even more of a common
event in VB.  You can start Word and watch it construct the document
before your eyes purely with library calls - I don't know if this is
actually what the Office API is, but it is obviously some part of it.

Alternatively it may be throwing macros at a running instance of Word.

That being the case, I doubt there is any nice work around :(

Maybe an OOo M$ Office API translation project may soon emerge :)  

One can hope.

Ryan