Hi, On Mar 29, 2007, at 8:55 AM, Erich Neuwirth wrote: > It is accessible at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00180-007-0023-6 > If you cannot access it, write to me, I will send you a copy. > > Currently, we are working on a cross-platform alternative to using > COM to connect the spread-sheet to R. The platforms in mind are > (at least) Windows, Linux and MacOS (X). The spreadsheet program > of choice for our next integration will be Gnumeric, where the > integration is already worked on by students.
Thanks for that link. I read the paper and I think that 80% to 90% of the work you have done would be directly translateable into OpenOffice.org (OOo). OOo uses it own component object model UNO and it can abstract its interfaces in similar ways and can employ embedding of objects (including the entire application) in much the same way. OOo spreadsheet has its own Basic programming language interface (some work has been done by the Novell people to actually enable extend the OOo Basic object model to translate and run VBA macros). The ideas and concepts behind how you interfaced R and Excel in the paper should be almost exactly the same as how OOo and R could be integrated. The UNO component model is already cross-platform and network based (OOo runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, some BSD's etc). Bridges for C++ - UNO, C - UNO, Java - UNO, Python - UNO, and obviously back already exist for multiple processors, multiple compilers, and multiple operating systems. Similarly to MS Office, each application in OOo is actually its own component (I once played around with a Java app that embedded all of Calc in it with only a few lines of code). And of course, OOo is fully LGPL now. Given that Calc will most probably rapidly replace GNumeric as the GNU/OSS spreadsheet of choice (it already replaced GNumeric in the GNome Desktop office environment) and given the UNO cross-platform component model already exists (and I believe was modeled after DCOM/ COM), someone may be able to take the source code and rcom package talked about in the paper and convert it with hopefully minimal pain to create an runo package and associated source code that would use OOo's Basic and not VBA to create an Add-In. FWIW, Kevin ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
