Python vs Visual Basic

[Alex Martelli]

Tim Churches wrote:
   ...
>> > LaTeX source would just fry their brains.  So I'm stuck with Word.
>> 
>> You could use Python and RTF: Microsoft Word can load RT docs, and
>> even save in RTF, without too much trouble.
> 
> Couldn't OpenOffice 1.1 and its PyUNO interface be used to generate MS
> Word files (and other formats)?

Yes (I'm a reasonably heavy user of both MS Office documents, and
the new OpenOffice 1.1, and haven't met any docs giving me serious
trouble yet).  However, from a first cursory examination, PyUNO seems
roughly as cumbersome to use as the MS Office COM object model (I
suspect that in both cases a reasonable framework could be designed
to ease typical tasks, but developing it is a substantial investment), so
I would stick with RTF (for Word; CSV for Excel, etc) as much as feasible,
since those text-centered file formats lend themselves to much easier
processing, and particularly to templating, a very handy approach.


Alex