Re: converting VB programs (was Re: developing a K12 Linux distribution)

[Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net>]

"Pete St. Onge" wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
>      This discussion of converting VB to another language makes me
> curious about something. VB is certainly a standalone language, but
> subsets exist within common MS and other programs (Word, Excel) called
> VBA (VB for Applications). One can build specialized functions within
> these programming environments that the applications can use.
>      I have some code to calculate diversity simple diversity indicies,
> for instance, that folks can download (source code and all) and use. I
> would love to port this to a completely OSS spreadsheet so that one
> would not have to use Excel to obtain those functions. Does anyone know
> of any such beasts which can be extended by adding simple user
> functions? Am trying to stay away from getting into program internals,
> as the people I am trying to reach (typically ecological scientists and
> grad students) seldom have the time or the inclination to become
> proficient in C, C++ in order to implement new functions.

That might make an even better case for a VB->Perl translater!  I
believe Gnumeric will have Perl macro cabability.

Of course, it would be a pretty big project to write code to
automatically convert references to all of Microshaft's objects to
similar objects in GNU apps.  Could be done though.

I don't think I'd try this on my own, but if a project did it I might
well 
contribute.