best way to interface D code to Excel

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d-learn]

Hi.

Any thoughts on the best way to write D functions that I can call 
from Excel?  I am completely unfamiliar with Windows programming 
and COM (last time I wrote this kind of thing was in the mid-90s 
I think using xloper and C).

The easiest way for now seems to be via pyxll and pyd.  Wrap the 
D function using pyd and then call it from an annotated pyxll 
python function.  That's probably good enough for a start, but it 
requires python to be installed on each user machine which I 
would rather not have as the end game - just a single xll would 
be perfect.

I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status.  And there 
was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - 
wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of 
thing.  Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly.

So I would like to write:
1. worksheet function that will function picker and have help 
text in the picker.  In general will take some combination of 
strings, doubles and arrays of doubles as arguments and return 
either string, double, or range/matrix of doubles.
2. vba function with similar kinds of arguments and return values.

I know it's easy to do this with double** and the like - at least 
on the VBA side.  I got a bit stuck navigating the headers when 
it comes to Excel strings.

If anyone has some source they could point me to, and some 
reading material then I would very much appreciate it.  This 
might help facilitate adoption of D within a large financial 
institution, but it is early days yet.  And I would guess this is 
a common sort of use for people operating in a financial 
environment, since people are still attached to spreadsheets.

Thanks.


Laeeth.