I so enjoyed Ralph Mason’s dictionary.rb script (a console script for
fetching word definitions from dictionary.com, available at
http://www.geocities.com/masonralph/lookup.txt ) that I decided I wanted to
use it in Microsoft Word. I originally tried doing this using Paul’s
RubyCOM, but ran into problems with failed chained dependencies on
socket.so. So I wrapped some simple VBA stuff around a shelled console call,
displaying the results in a VBA text box.
A description and the source code is available at:
http://www.jamesbritt.com/articles/RubyAndVbaForWebDictionarySearches.html
Nothing fancy, but a handy example for those looking for an easy way to
integrate arbitrary, console-based Ruby scripts into Office applications.
James Britt