Several years ago I developed a system that would create a data file
that would merge with WordPerfect documents to create letters and
billing statements. I am now trying to do the same thing with WORD, but
don't find that WORD has any where near the flexibility to do what I
want to do. Is anyone aware of a package that has WYSIWYG capabilities
in developing the main document that will then read a data file to
merge in the variable data(i.e. addressee, addresses, billing amounts,
etc.) and can be execute through UniVerse or Wintegrate?

Thank you,

Val

Word is a very good product to interact with any database. You don't
need any data file, just the database. I suggest you to buy a good Word
book (McGrawHill are my favourites in MS environment).

I can do almost anything with Word and Excel using VBA.

If you are in USA Tony Gravagno has in Nebula excellent products to
interact with Ms-Office. I think he is changing the way he sells them
but i am sure that you can contact with him and he can help you. I
suggest you also to talk with him not for products, he will help you a
lot with consulting and teaching in this way. I began with this some
years ago (more than 10 integrating Office with AP or D3, even with
Word95 and Windows 3.11) and Tony help me a lot all this years, from
Pick Systems, from Raining Data and from Nebula (Mark Brown also
specially with D3 ODBC and D3 class DLL).

If you are in UK may be i can do the same, not so good as Tony. I am 1
hour plane from London with Easy Jet flights all days. I do not know a
lot of Universe but i am sure you do and if i integrated AP with Word95
in 1994 i can do it with Universe and Office XP in 2005, i do it a lot
with D3).

But i repeat, you must learn MS-Office and VBA.

Hope this help
joseba real de asua

Thanks for the referral Joseba!

Val - Yes, I've done a lot with Word and it is quite a capable
platform for development. You said "but don't find that WORD has any
where near the flexibility to do what I want to do". Seriously now,
there are tens of thousands of developers coding into Word, and
millions of Word users, that must attest to some flexibility. The
Word development forums have more traffic in a minute than we have in
this forum in a day. Whatever you want to do with Word should be
possible.

The product that Joseba referred do is described here:
http://removethisNebula-RnD.com/products/doc.htm
I don't have a demo of Word integration on-line but the audio/video
presentation showing Excel integration gives you an idea of how these
work:
http://removethisNebula-RnD.com/demos/nebulanalysis/
Unfortunately I am no longer offering these components, as most Pick
developers tend to think it's sexy enough to import plain text into
Word and Excel with Accuterm, and only larger end-users seem to care
at all about Outlook - which I'd hope would catch the attention of
VARs but it hasn't, and here we are. But I digress...

Using VBA or a COM add-in you can create quite sophisticated data
exchanges to/from Word, but you must understand the Word Object Model
in order to instruct it to do those complex functions. The next
version of MS Office has a lot of great integration with .NET that
will make it even more powerful. The only problem is when you try to
use Word as a server, pumping data out from MV into any office app.
These are intended to be workstation applications with a GUI in front
of an end-user, not servers for multiple users. Microsoft understands
that people like me want to use apps like Word as a server and has
made clear statements that it won't hold up to such punishment. After
doing a lot of work in that area I unforunately tend to agree. The
solution in this case is not to pump data into Word or other office
apps, but to have the apps draw data from MV, or to place data into a
work area and then trigger the Office apps to process that data.

My advice to you is to lead with business requirements and not with
technology. Decide what you really need to do and I'm sure there will
be a way to do it. If you start looking at capabilities of wIntegrate
or Accuterm and then try to pidgeon-hole Word to that model, you'll
fall far short of your goals - and then people will just blame your
Universe system because it can't do what "mainstream" systems do.

I'll be happy to help as possible, including writing the whole project
up for you.

HTH
Tony
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD .com

"jra" <frelance (AT) sarenet (DOT) es> wrote:

Val,

I have a couple of options that might fit the bill.

The first is WordLynx, which sounds like it operates in a similar
manner to what you had operating with Word Perfect (once in the dim
dark past we used this under SCO). WordLynx will enable you to produce
your forms from ANY Universe device - green screens included

You can download an eval & documentation by following the prompts under
the LynxDownloads button. This is the easiest & most cost effective
option we offer (can also be upgraded to include Fax & Mail
capabilities with other Lynx products - there are also "Visage"
versions of these products with upgraded facilities [eg: incoming faxes
can be sent to email recipients with Visage.Faxer], but the machine the
products are running on then must be WinXP or later))

The other option would be Visage.Reporter, which as well as being able
to produce reports with drag'n'drop dictionary integration, can also be
used to produce traditional forms.

Like all of the Visage modules, Reporter can be deployed 'stand alone'
and can be 'conscripted' from your existing applications with a single
subroutine call.

You would need the 'server' version of this product, which means you
would need a WinXP or later machine available in the network to run the
Visage.ReportServer service.

Simple forms production is 'thin edge of the wedge' for reporter, which
is precisely why it MAY be more appealing, as it gives you the
potential to update your existing reporting capabilities incrementally
over time.

Contact me directly (rossf @ stamina . com . au) if you want to have a
play with Reporter and I'll arrange a test drive for you


Ross Ferris
Stamina Software
Visage - get ALL of the pieces of the Application Puzzle