start activeX out of Squeak possible?

John R. Pierce john at pierce.name
Wed Jul 7 12:14:37 UTC 2004


Hi Thom,

To wrap a COM or ActiveX object with .NET and automate it in Squeak you will
need to do the following steps.  First you need to ensure you have the .NET
Framework Runtime Redistributable and the .NET Framework SDK installed to do
what I am about to show you.  Here's some URLs if you need to download and
install:

  1. .NET Runtime Redistributable: http://tinyurl.com/95zt
  2. .NET SDK: http://tinyurl.com/97x7

Basically you only need to install the .NET Runtime to use the Squeak .NET
interface and to automate .NET objects, but to do the COM automation you need a
small utility out of the .NET SDK to wrap the COM object so you are stuck
getting and installing 100+ Megs of the SDK just to make this work.  Sorry about
that part.

*SIDEBAR* : Interestingly enough, once you have the relatively small .NET
Runtime installed, Microsoft gives away the C#, C++, J#, and VB.NET compilers in
the runtime redistributable so you can write, build, and run .NET applications
with your favorite text editor and command-line builds without buying a thing
from anyone.  In fact, any machine that has the .NET runtime installed on it
(which are many these days) is essentially a development box since the compilers
come with .NET for free.

Now that you have .NET installed you can install the Squeak .NET interface (just
to get software installation activities completed).  Open Package Loader and
find and install the Squeak/.NET Bridge package.  You can test your installation
to ensure you have both .NET and the Squeak .NET bridge installed correctly by
opening a workspace and printing the following line:

  DotNet ArrayList new count

It should create a new .NET ArrayList (which has no elements) and print its
count (the .NET equivalent of "size").  Of course, zero should be printed.

If you have all this successfully, you are well on your way to automating your
COM object.  I will demonstrate the wrapping of a COM object and automating in
Squeak in a subsequent post since this posting is more general in nature.

Regards,

John



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