COM controls

[lairdre]

Hello All,
I was wondering if anyone had done any work on accessing com controls from B4PPC? Anyone working on a library? I'm just curious, I may go down that route but didn't want to duplicate any effort.

Thanks,

Ron

[agraham]

Yes, my SpeechLibDesktop library Text To Speech library (desktop only) wraps the COM object "Microsoft Speech Object Library".

However you may or may not have STAThread/MTAThread issues which I have had on previous attempts to use COM controls with B4PPC - but something has changed with the new builds of B4PPC that lets at least one of the previously failed attempts now work. I am trying to clarify the situation with Erel.

EDIT :- Erel has confirmed that as from version 6.5 the desktop threading model is STAThread which means that COM controls should now be usable. I have a WebBrowser control library for the desktop that now runs and is nearly ready to go so now that Erel has confirmed the change I will polish and post it.

[lairdre]

Thanks for the replay I will look at your source and see if it helps. I noticed this was a desktop app, I'm looking to implement com on the ppc. Any useful ideas?

Thanks,

Ron

[agraham]

Originally Posted by lairdre

Any useful ideas?

Afraid not. I am primarily desktop oriented, especially since I got an EEE PC that has just about displaced my PPC. I haven't used COM on the device but as I use Visual Studio 2005 it is dead easy on the desktop as VS2005 builds the Interop assembly for you.

For the device I believe you will need .NET 2.0 - from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446497.aspx "Unfortunately, the .NET Compact Framework 1.0 does not support COM Interop. To be able to use existing COM objects inside a managed application, the approach is to write a native C++ wrapper DLL around the COM object." .NET 2.0 does support COM Interop and that article seems to be a good start.