Path: ...!feeder3.eternal-september.org!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-11,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: The problem with not owning the software
Date: 30 Dec 2024 07:00:36 GMT
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <lteuokFdi94U1@mid.individual.net>
References: <9OCcnRW7grqkbPT6nZ2dnZfqnPUAAAAA@earthlink.com>
	<vkfva1$28j6k$1@toylet.eternal-september.org> <vkhqif$2hvap$1@dont-email.me>
	<vkmd9n$3l76a$4@toylet.eternal-september.org> <vko7up$6qks$2@dont-email.me>
	<ltb26aFov8dU1@mid.individual.net> <fUYbP.143220$bYV2.129957@fx17.iad>
	<ltbjk1FrgqvU3@mid.individual.net>
	<zKecnbsivueyNO36nZ2dnZfqn_HTpa6r@earthlink.com>
	<vks1gq.ufk.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net>
	<ltdrjlF7nkqU6@mid.individual.net> <vkso91$12a03$10@dont-email.me>
	<2d84nj977vqsg5ar71obv8m0tfhj1cejse@4ax.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: individual.net pdkfD8gGf9D+di1IXtwlRASbaSkaZbCGlzmnNgHASVGTxQJLIS
Cancel-Lock: sha1:gswWikhQPz6WjokgBFzcm2a1oSo= sha256:/vWVbDM47xWt0WtQjFMHV/eCNJI1btTra1X5xfH6lY8=
User-Agent: Pan/0.149 (Bellevue; 4c157ba)
Bytes: 3008

On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 22:30:53 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:08:00 -0500, -hh <recscuba_google@huntzinger.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>I have a colleague who's done some amazing stuff in Excel using Visual
>>Basic Script (VBS); the PC I had at the time would fail just trying to
>>load the files; his beefy machine he had would take literally hours to
>>crunch through a set.  A quick search shows that I still have an older
>>copy: it takes up 14.34GB on disk. Youch.
> 
> I assume you meant to say VBA, Visual Basic for Applications, which is
> built into each of the major MS Office applications?

Possibly, but there was a VBScript.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBScript

I used JScript which was similar to JavaScript but Microsoft didn't want 
to butt heads with Sun. They had been down that road with Visual J++. You 
could use either with Windows Script Host.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host

and make COM calls against the applications that supported it. For example 
I used it in conjunction with EagleView (now Pictometry).  Given the 
latitude and longitude of an incident I could create a URL referencing the 
EagleView server, instantiate a connection to IE, and call the 
NavigateTo() function with the URL. The relevant page would come up in IE.

It was a long way around the barn but it was easier than trying to 
incorporate COM into an existing application. That was a very simple use 
but you could make calls to any functionality exposed as COM. That whole 
technology goes back to OLE and DDE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding

Very powerful but as it was designed to work with VisualBasic the data 
structures were the wierd Basic things like BSTRs.