Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

As is true for any work of this sort, we couldn t have written this book without the help of many people. We ll start with shared thanks to the people who contributed in one way or another to the content of the book, then finish with our more personal thank yous.

Our technical editor, Ted Roche, tested tons of examples, asked hard questions, caught us when we got sloppy, and generally did the things technical editors are supposed to do. But he really did much more because he s the one who first showed Tamar how elegant Automation could be and got her hooked on it. Without Ted, this book would never have existed.

Whil Hentzen has been a friend for much longer than he s been a publishing magnate. Thanks for once again providing an outlet for people who just need to put words on pages.

Lots of people answered our questions as we tried to understand how Office worked. Many of them are Microsoft MVPs for the help they give others. Our thanks to Chris Woodman, Bob Buckland, Brian Reilly, Rolf Keller, Jessie Louise McClennan, Mike Sherrill, and Steven Stern. Special thanks to Cindy Meister, who reviewed some of the Word material in an earlier form, as well as answering tons of questions. Our apologies to anyone we missed.

A couple of people provided more than just answers. Rick Strahl allowed us to include GetConstants.EXE, an application that extracts the constants from a type library, in the Developer Download files available at www.hentzenwerke.com. See Chapter 2, "The Office Servers," for more information.

John V. Petersen introduced us to VFPCOM.DLL, which provides two-way communication between VFP and Automation servers (see Chapter 13, "Inter-Office Communication"), and wrote a special DLL that makes it work with PowerPoint. John s DLL is included in the Developer Download files. Robert Green of Microsoft also provided some of the information we needed to include VFPCOM.DLL.

Sometimes, the biggest help comes not from answering our questions, but from providing ideas and opportunities. In 1995, Brian Jones approached Della with his ideas for an Office Automation component of the famous JFAST program. Della s been writing Automation code ever since. Thanks to Brian s ideas and the ability to implement them in such a long-lived project, Della has the knowledge and experience to document for others in this book.

Over the years, far too many people in the FoxPro community have helped us out for us to begin to list them all here. You know who you are, and we appreciate all your help. However, special thanks to Mac Rubel, who helped formulate some of these ideas very early in the process, and Dan Freeman, who taught Tamar an awful lot about spelunking in the Office object models.

Many people in a number of different product groups at Microsoft have participated in bringing Automation to the point that it s a viable technology. We don t know their names, but we sure do appreciate their work.

 

By the time you write the third book, your family gets kind of used to it and starts wondering if it s an addiction of some sort. (It is.) Thanks once again to my husband, Marshal, who makes it all possible, and my sons, Solomon and Nathaniel, who make it worthwhile.

To my extended family and friends, your willingness to let me babble on about my work is always appreciated, as is the change of pace from it you provide.

Thanks as always to the crew at Advisor Media, and my other friends and colleagues in the professional community.

Tamar

 

Because this is my first book, my family is just getting used to this, and, thanks to Tamar s influence, they re assuming this is going to become a way of life. (I hope so.) My husband, Mike, has been a terrific source of encouragement, inspiration, and support. My daughter, Kelsey, and my son, Kerry, have been wonderfully patient, hearing me say many, many times, "We ll do that later, honey. Mommy s writing her book, now."

Thanks to my Mom and Dad, for all their love and immense support. My extended family deserves a lot of credit for putting up with my laptop at a number of family gatherings.

There are so many others of you to thank. Many thanks to the CompuServe FoxGang, for all the confidence and knowledge you ve helped me build. Thank you so much to my co-workers at the Systems Development Institute at the University of Tennessee, and especially the entire JFAST team. And to all the friends and acquaintances I ve met on-line and at DevCons, thanks for your encouragement.

Tamar, Ted, and Whil: a special thanks to you for inviting me to collaborate with you, and make my dream of writing a book come true.

della

 

Copyright 2000 by Tamar E. Granor and Della Martin All Rights Reserved