Can I use the RTF format? - editor

I am making a text editor and I want to support rtf text files. I want my editor to create RTF text documents and read them. I was doing research and I read that Microsoft developed the rtf format. Can I make this editor without paying any royalties or getting into legal trouble?

You can make the editor.
Microsoft allows use of the file format under its Open Specification Program, which states that:
"Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (“Covered Implementation”), subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise." (quoted from here)
Among the covered specifications are "Other Office File Formats", among which are RTF (document found here).
You do not need to notify Microsoft for use of these formats.

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Building an interface from Spotfire (with its SDK) to the BO reporting environment

I just got a new task; I need to:
"Team have an Excel spreadsheet which contains basic data about subjects in a trial. A custom VB script in the Excel sheet allows them to generate BO reports. At a very high level, they are able to select a particular cell in the Pivot table and then execute a VB script via a custom button in the Excel sheet. The script generates an XML file containing metadata about those subjects and some additional parameters such as report title and saves the XML file to a watched directory. An external process picks it up and generates a fully-formatted BO report with complete details about the identified subjects from the drug safety database, and sends it to the user as a PDF in a new browser window.
So really this is not about doing data analysis within Spotfire (including R), but it is more to do with building an interface from Spotfire to the BO reporting environment. I believe this can be done with the Spotfire SDK, which uses IronPython as its scripting language, but I cannnot say for certain because I have very little experience in that area."
Is there any chance for some high level suggestion of what approach do I have to take in order to attain the functionality requested ?
I also dont have any exp with Spotfire's tibco technical support. Do you guys think I can ask any such questions to them ?
Regards,
Jacek

Sharepoint: View office documents directly (on the web)

I am looking for a way to allow users without the Office 20XX package to view documents in a Sharepoint 2007 document library. Ideally, it would allow them to open the documents directly from the document library, but if it's implemented through a web part where you select documents and such, that would be great as well.
It is not a necessity that people can edit the documents, they simply need to be able to view them. I am looking for something that opens both Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, but a solution that only covers one type still has interest.
In SharePoint 2007, you can view Excel documents in Excel Services via Excel Web Access WebPart:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-excel-services-and-excel-web-access-HA010105476.aspx
For Word, you can use Word to HTMl Service:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/convert-a-word-document-to-a-web-page-HA010163780.aspx
Things are much more easier if you have SharePoint 2010.
You could have a document converter, convert all your office documents to word format
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms518493%28v=office.12%29.aspx
Then use the word to web page document converter
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/sharepoint-server-help/configure-the-document-to-web-page-converters-HA010157537.aspx

Delphi, read data from 3rd party data field

I am writing an application that needs to read a data field on another Delphi program and I do not have access to the source code of the 3rd party program. The data field contains the "foreign key" to a record I need to retrieve or create in my application.
I would appreciate any links to knowledge or components that will help me with my program.
I'm assuming that you are trying to "screen scrape" a text field from another app. You can use FindWindow to get a handle that that window, then dig through the child windows to find the control that you're looking for (WinDowse by Greatis will be very helpful here for exploring manually). Finally, send a WM_GetText message to the control that has the data. Here is an example of how to do this: About.Com article on digging and scraping with Internet Explorer.
Edit: D'oh! WM_GetText is already wrapped in the VCL with the GetWindowText function defined in windows.pas. ex:
GetWindowText(Wnd, PC, sizeof(PC));

View/Modify word document online?

We are currently using the Interop for word document maniplulation's like merge of fields to word template docs and also some macro code which on download of the word file to the cient system does some calculation and gets updated on the server !
We need to change this .
Is there any way like view/modifying a word document online(Web) make changes to doc and get it saved to the server ?
Regards,
Francis P.
You can use Google Docs
Another way is to use the Microsoft Office 365 API.
Office 365 API reference

Bulk process invoices with QuickBooks SDK including cover letter

Is there a way to print, via the SDK (I'm using qbXML and the QuickBooks web connector to connect to a Java application server, SDK version 7.0, QuickBooks enterprise 9.0) invoices with their cover letter? It may take a third party tool, because it seems that QuickBooks has a nice little checkbox of "to be printed" which lets you go and print them one by one from the reminders window and little else (you can print the invoice in bulk, and labels in bulk this way, but not cover letters)?
As an alternative, some way of flagging the invoice created via the SDK on creation so that it can be printed with the appropriate cover letter later?
The only way to accomplish this is via a very tight Quickbooks UI event integration, and even then it would be challenging. The QuickBooks SDK basically supports the UI functionality (or really a subset thereof, but a large subset). The UI has no way of specifying a cover letter on the to be printed invoices, unless you do it manually one by one, so there is no way to do it via the SDK.
If there is a third party tool to do this, I was unable to find one.
You could fetch the invoice data from QuickBooks via the SDK and write your own PDF generation routine to batch-print the invoices... it wouldn't make use of the QuickBooks PDF generation stuff nor the actual QuickBooks templates however.

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