"Would Python meet our requirements? " Yes and no. Because Python is a very high-level language and dynamically typed it is easy to learn. Python doesn't make use of pointers but you are able to write object-oriented code (as opposed to just being object-friendly like Visual Basic is). You will find that on its own you won't be able to do any Office macro scripting although there are several packages that will give you added functionality like access to Com+ objects (see win32 modules by Mark Hammond). Now, this may require more work than using VBA but it *is* doable. The com portion of the win32 modules can enable one to create even a macro-language unto itself!
Python is very powerful. There are many 3rd party modules and frameworks (Zope, CherryPy). Also, there are many GUI toolkits available for it (wxWindows, GTK, QT, Tk and on and on) and you can also use it as a wrapper to write and compile to Java bytecode (see Jython). The problem for you, however, is it may or may *not* meet every requirement. For that you'll have to find out for yourself. I suggest downloading Python and giving the Python tutorial a whirl and then taking a look at other Python-related stuff: [For programmers:] http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html [For non-programmers:] http://honors.montana.edu/~jjc/easytut/easytut/ [Win32 stuff:] http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/ [Tk 'Tkinter':] http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/ [wxPython:] http://www.wxpython.org/ [PyGTK:] http://www.pygtk.org/ Purusing these links will give you a very good idea of whether Python is right for you. Naturally we'd all like to say 'YES Python is good for you!' but you have to investigate for yourself. Good luck! Harlin Seritt -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
