JairoL's WebLog

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 and Microsoft Office 2007

Jairo.Lopez — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:39:00 GMT

When you install the VSTO 2005 one of the pre-requisites is Microsoft Office 2003 SP1.

There are several templates that allow you to create different kind of projects, from add-ins to document-level customizations.

If you are targeting Office 2007 the document-level customizations developed in VSTO2005 for Office 2003 will work. The only thing you can't do is take advantage of the new features in Office 2007.

Also, you can get the VSTO 2005 SE and get the templates to create add-ins specifically for Office 2007. But if you install Office 2007 on a machine with VSTO 2005 the document-level customizations templates will not work anymore. The reason is that those templates are looking for the Office 2003 PIAs (Primary Interop Assembly).

Document-level customization for Office 2007 is a expected feature in Visual Studio 'Orcas', expected to be release in Q4 2007.

How to get Visual Studio Tools for Office ?

Jairo.Lopez — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:25:00 GMT

If you need help making a decision of which Visual Studio is rigth for you, on this page you can compare the different versions of Visual Studio 2005: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700921.aspx

Basically, when you get the VSTO 2005 you get the Visual Studio Professional IDE with C# and VB.net.

So you don’t have to buy Visual Studio 2005 Professional and VSTO 2005. You just need to get VSTO 2005.

Also, from the compare link you can see that the VSTO 2005 also supports SQL Server 2005 Integration.

But if you alredy have Visual Studio Professional 2005 then you need to get the VSTO Upgrade. VSTO doesn't work on the Express Editions or in the Standard Edition.

Visual APL works with Visual Studio 2005 Standard or better.

How to unregister a VisualAPL .Net assembly exposed as COM

Jairo.Lopez — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:23:00 GMT

The RegAsm tool can be use to register/unregister .Net assemblies expose to COM.

To unregister an assembly:

RegAsm assemblyFile /unregister

Full documentation on the RegAsm tool can be found here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tzat5yw6(vs.80).aspx

Using ToolStrips in Visual APL

administrator — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 04:58:00 GMT

There have been several questions recently asking how best to implement ToolStrips on Windows Forms in Visual APL.

Legacy []WI implementations have limited support for ToolStrips, and Visual APL has implemented a subset of what []WI systems supported. However, while the legacy ToolStrip support is there, you will have a better and more extensible solution using the new controls directly.

To show how easy it is to experiment with Windows controls in Visual APL, the code below was created by just typing from scratch in the session.

Notice that a.Show() displays the Form. Do not click on the close X while you are playing with this example, as it will dispose of the form and you will have to run the code again from where you created the Form.

Also, If you have the menu displayed as you add and remove items, it will show them being removed and added.

Also again, the refbyname System.Drawing and using System.Drawing need be done only once during your session, but it is not destructive to run them many times.

The nicest new feature that most APL'ers will notice is that each control is an object, and can be used, reused and even used in different contexts, as on different Forms. It is really quite amazing, and the possibilities are endless once you get aquanted with object programming.

Here is the example, which again was just typed in the session:

a = Form()

ms = MenuStrip()

file = ToolStripMenuItem()

open = ToolStripMenuItem()

exit = ToolStripMenuItem()

help = ToolStripMenuItem()

about = ToolStripMenuItem()

ms.Items.AddRange(file help)

refbyname System.Drawing

using System.Drawing

ms.Location = Point(0,0)

ms.Name= "menuStrip1"

ms.Size= Size(292,24)

ms.TabIndex = 0

file.DropDownItems.AddRange(open exit)

a.Show()

a.Controls.Add(ms)

file.Name= "File"

file.Size = Size(35,20)

file.Text = "File"

open.Name= "open"

open.Size= Size(152,22)

open.Text= "Open"

exit.Name= "exit"

exit.Size= Size(152,22)

exit.Text = "Exit"

file.DropDownItems.Remove(open)

file.DropDownItems.Insert(0, open)

If you want to use arrays to create and modify these controls, which of course opens a veritable panoply of options:

a = Form()

ms = MenuStrip()

tsm = ToolStripMenuItem() ToolStripMenuItem() ToolStripMenuItem() ToolStripMenuItem() ToolStripMenuItem()

file = 0

open = 1

exit = 2

help = 3

about = 4

ms.Items.AddRange(tsm[file] tsm[open])

refbyname System.Drawing

using System.Drawing

ms.Location = Point(0,0)

ms.Name= "menuStrip1"

ms.Size= Size(292,24)

ms.TabIndex = 0

tsm[file].DropDownItems.AddRange(tsm[open] tsm[exit])

a.Show()

a.Controls.Add(ms)

tsm[file].Name= "File"

tsm[file].Size = Size(35,20)

tsm[file].Text = "File"

tsm[open].Name= "open"

tsm[open].Size= Size(152,22)

tsm[open].Text= "Open"

Once you catch the idea of creating menus as seperate objects, you can do all kinds of neat things. Like build the MenuStrip object using the example above, store it in memory until you need it, and then just add it to your Form. Then when your menu has served its purpose, just remove it from your Form. Even though the menu strip is not on any running Form, it still resides in memory, and you can put it back on the Form at any time, or even on several Forms at once.

Also, keep in mind you can paste these into an edit session in Visual APL and they will just run when you press Ctrl+E

WebServers version 1.3.2800

Jairo.Lopez — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:30:00 GMT

New versions of the WebServers family of products will be posted soon. These new versions required ActivationApplication version 1.0.3600.

Two new members have been added to bring the versatility of AplNext WebServers to the power of 64-bit hardware.

These are the new versions:

Application Server
Application Server x64
Commerce Server
Commerce Server x64

ActivationSetup version 1.0.3600

Jairo.Lopez — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:17:00 GMT

A new version of the ActivationApplication will be posted soon.

This new version won't rely on the registry key to validate the activation. We had found that some antivirus and some security policies in Windows may prevent the ActivationApplication from writing the activation key to the registry.

This new version will also remember the last entries so you won't have to keep typing the same information over and over again ;)

Upcoming features:

Email activation

APLNext Beta 9.6

Jairo.Lopez — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:01:00 GMT

A new version of APLNext (Beta 9.6) will be posted soon. I will update this log entry with the download link.

Some of the new features are:

Intellisense for APL operators (Ctrl+K,Ctrl+O)
Template for WebServices projects.
Intellisense for this.
The left ALT key can be use to type APL characters while editing scripts on the Cielo Explorer.
Legacy control structures (:SELECT, :IF, :WHILE, etc) can now be use uppercase.

Upcoming features:

Localization for the keyboard. At this moment the APL characters are mapped to the keyboard character not the keyboard location. Local resources will be added to mapped the apl characters to differenct keyboard characters based on the culture.
Publish property page. The Publish property page will allow users to deploy Windows Forms projects using No-Touch deployment.
WebApplication template. The template will allow users to create WebApplications using APLNext.
Intellisense for inherited members.

APLNext Beta 9.5

Jairo.Lopez — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:27:00 GMT

APLNext Beta 9.5 was release last week.

One of the new features is the ability to use the left side ALT key to type APL characters. However this feature is only available when editing source files (.cv) and on the Cielo Explorer session (not when editing scripts).
But this feature comes with some side effects:

- Because we want to be good citizens we let the ALT key go thru if it is not mapped to an APL character. The side effect is that you may get a Visual Studio menu or window pop up when pressing a wrong combination.
- The APL characters are mapped to the keyboard KeyCode, not the keyboard key location. For example: enclose is map to ALT+Z not to the left most character on the bottom row of characters on your keyboard.
- Since APLNext is integrated with Visual Studio, if something/somebody gets the ALT key before Visual Studio, APLNext won't be able to type the APL character.

Remember that on the Cielo Explorer Session you can type Ctrl+K, Ctrl+O to get Intellisense on the APL characters. This feature will be available when editing the source files on Beta 9.6.

Intellisense is getting better every day, next on the list are support for inherited members. I will not commit to a date right now but I will keep you posted.