Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:

I looked into those (thank you again for providing the links),
but - as you anticipated - I found out that probably the only
way to do what I need is to "roll-my-own" solution similar
to mailmerge mechanism (using Word OLE interfaces).

I planned to use mergefields. My Word extension would recognize
which of them have to be treated as tabular data an it would be
my extension that does the value substitution (not the Word
mailmerge mechanism).

Before I got to a working prototype, I was shown an application
that does a very similar task. It was "Microsoft Small Business
Accounting 2006". It allows to create invoice (and not only
invoice) templates using XSD schema and XML tags in the document
and XML tag nesting is used to indicate tabular data. The application
then allows creation of invoice document (from invoice application
form) with chosen invoice template.
The problem is that I found no documents nor articles that would
describe how one can do such transformation. I mean how can
I use such a Word document place document data in the XML tags
(including tabular data). If there is such a manual or article,
then I'd be grateful for a link to it, but I'm afraid that
"Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006" has it's own solution
that uses Word interfaces to locate XML tags and replace them
with data, and that there's no additional support for such
actions.

Another idea that came to me was a slightly different approach.
It did not require any use of Word OLE interfaces (so you not
only do not have to deal with differences between Word versions
but also do not need any Word version installed at all).
The idea was to create an application that is able to read
and modify Word documents in Microsoft Office Open XML format
(docx, docm). The format is open, so all specifications are
available and is based on XML, which is quite easy to use.
Support for Open XML can be added to Word 2000, Word 2002 (XP)
and Word 2003 (and is natively supported in Word 2007), so there
should be no problems with users of older Word versions. The
problems with this solutions are:
- Microsoft Office Open XML format specification is more
 that 6000 pages long, so there's no way I can read it
 all.
- Microsoft Office Open XML format uses ZIP compression, so
 my application does not only have to handle XML, but also
 has to handle ZIP decompression and compression.
My application has to be written using Delphi 6 and can't
use .Net, so .Net 2.0 support for Open XML is not available
for me. I'll deal with the size of Open XML specification
somehow, but the ZIP part of the problem remains. I looked
for any documentation on any Microsoft API that allows
ZIP handling. There should be something like this at least
on the Windows platforms that have integrated ZIP handling
(like Windows ME, Windows XP) and / or when the MS Office
with Open XML format support is installed (eg. Windows 98
with Word 2000 with Open XML support installed). My goal
is to:
1.not include any ZIP handling library in my application,
2.use any available Microsoft ZIP handling (as above:
 from Windows or from MS Office),
3.if no Microsoft ZIP handling is available, allow user
 to select any third party compression application that's
 able to handle ZIP files.
If you know anything that would help me achieve the second
part, then I'd be very grateful.

Thank you all in advance and thanks again to Doug Robbins
for all the help he already provided.

Regards.

Hilarion

PS.: Again, if you'll find my English not clear, then please
    not hesitate and ask - I'll try to explain better.
    English is not my native language and I do not have
    much occasions to use and practice it, so it's very
    far from perfect.