CAPE-OPEN

I am a first-time user of the COCO forum. My questions may from time-to-time show my ignorance. I hope to learn by asking questions so here is my first-ever question.

The COFE.xlt template for Microsoft Excel is an important asset for the COCO suite of programs. I would like to use it. The COCO download utility ran on my computer with a message that Microsoft Excel was not found on the host computer so COFE.xlt would not be loaded.

The Apache Software Foundation supports Apache OpenOffice 3.4, which is "the original open source office productivity suite designed for professional and consumer use." Since the spreadsheet in OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft Excel (footnote 1), why not modify the COCO download utility to load COFE.xlt if it finds either OpenOffice or Microsoft Excel on the host computer?

Since both COCO and Apache OpenOffice are open standard, why not unite them as I have described above?

1 Based on my personal experience over several years of use with the old version of OpenOffice developed by Oracle, I seamlessly read and write .xls files among the computers on my office intranet regardless of the spreadsheet software company.

First - CAPE-OPEN is an open standard. COCO and COFE are an implementation (just an implementation, there are many more) based on this standard. As such, COCO is not a standard.

Second, the COCO.xlt is an Excel template. It is always installed, whether Excel is installed or not. As opposed to the Excel CAPE-OPEN unit operation. The installer of the Excel CAPE-OPEN unit operation will detect whether Excel is installed or not. Note that COCO.xlt can be used to insert a COFE flowsheet into an Excel document, whereas the Excel CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation can be used to define the equations of a Unit Operation in Excel. The Unit Operation can subsequently be used in any CAPE-OPEN compliant simulator that supports the 1.1 thermo standard, not just COCO/COFE.

The Excel Unit Operation heavily depends on automation and COM, which is available in MS Excel (VBA) but not in OpenOffice. However, there are alternatives. You can for example set up your unit operation in Scilab (which is available free-of-charge and is open source): http://www.amsterchem.com/scilabunitop.html.

Inserting a COFE flowsheet in OpenOffice is done via Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). In principle you can do this in other applications that support OLE (http://www.cocosimulator.org/index_help ... mation.htm). But as far as I know, OpenOffice does not support OLE objects and allow COM access to these objects from their script.

Currently, accessing CAPE-OPEN based thermodynamics (COCO/TEA or other CAPE-OPEN compliant thermo) from OpenOffice calc is supported: http://www.amsterchem.com/oothermo.html.

Since the spreadsheet in OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft Excel (footnote 1)

1 Based on my personal experience over several years of use with the old version of OpenOffice developed by Oracle, I seamlessly read and write .xls files among the computers on my office intranet regardless of the spreadsheet software company.

This compatibily is indeed there. It is the VBA script that is available in MS office that is required to run the COCO components.