From: Jan Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2006-11-30T19:20:26+09:00
Subject: Re: MS Office and win32ole on Linux

On 11/30/06, Gustav Paul <gustav@rails.co.za> wrote:
> Li Chen wrote:
> > Gustav Paul wrote:
> >
> >> Hey
> >>
> >> I just tried requiring 'win32ole' in my Linux console but it doesn't
> >> seem to find it. I'm running MS Office under Linux with Crossover
> >> Office, and was hoping I'd be able to do my MS Office development under
> >> Linux from now on.
> >>
> >> Would getting the win32ole libraries help at all?
> >>
> >> Is there something small I'm missing or is this simply too ambitious?
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance
> >> Gustav Paul
> >> gustav@rails.co.za
> >>
> >
> > As far as I know WIN32OLE is a built-in library in the Ruby. In order to
> > use it you need to put this line
> >
> > require 'wine32ole'
> >
> > near the top of your script.
> >
> > Li
> >
> >
> Hi
>
> Thanks for the reply. I tried it in irb, but I get
>
> irb(main):001:0> require 'win32ole'
> LoadError: no such file to load -- win32ole
>         from (irb):1:in `require'
>         from (irb):1
>
> I tried 'wine32ole' as well, same problem.
> I noticed that on my Windows machine I've got
> c:\ruby\lib\ruby\1.8\win32
> c:\ruby\lib\ruby\1.8\win32ole
>
> Directories, which I can't find under
> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8
>
> Might it be necessary to download the win32ole library?
> Is there one for Linux?
>
> Thanks, I'd really love to be able to develop from Linux, but if all
> else fails, I suppose I'll make do with Windows :]

The problem is, that win32ole is a windows extension, you have linux
ruby and office running under wine. So you have to make them talk to
each other. You need to somehow compile the win32ole extension under
linux to use wine to talk to msoffice. I would say that:

1. it should be possible
2. many people will thank you for that ;-)
3. certainly it is not easy - you'd need to know a bit of ruby
internals, a bit of wine, a bit of OLE and you'd need to write C code
during the process.