Using the WinCOM API

With WinCOM Support, you can invoke a Windows™ application and send or receive data to or from it.

Prerequisites

To use this functionality, the program must use the Windows Front End.

Supported syntax

COM language syntax is very flexible and allows lots of notation. Genero WinCOM API is slightly more strict:

  • := notation is allowed in version 2.00.1e (or later) only; for instance: myFunction(SourceType:=3)
  • "no parenthesis" notation is not allowed; for instance: myFunction 3 must be writtenmyFunction(3)
  • numeric constants are allowed in version 2.00.1e (or later) only. The constant list depends on the application used via WinCOM, therefore the list is configurable: a file named etc/WinCOM.cst gathers all the constants provided today by Microsoft™ for Office XP. It can be modified to add user-defined constants. Example with Word: CALL ui.Interface.frontCall("WINCOM","SetProperty", [wdapp,"Selection.Font.Bold","9999998"],[wddoc]) Here, "9999998" stands for the constant wdToggle (see etc/WinCOM.cst).
  • There is no way to handle an array as a method argument. This is also due to BDL limitation: you can't pass BDL Arrays to frontcalls.