🚀 go-pugleaf

John--

VB5 CCE is available for download from: <http://download.com.com/3001-2403-880768.html>

It's odd--the Microsoft site was working earlier in the week. As Stu said, if you already have VB5, there's no need to get VB5 CCE. The only reason I've mentioned it is that it is (or, maybe, *was*) a free download of a full-featured VB development environment. But VBA from Word will work just fine. There's no reason not to use VB5--the only reason I hadn't mentioned it is that it's not commercially available for purchase.

In my opinion, there's no point in buying VB6, as it's not the current version. At the same time, it'll be a bit before we fully support VB.NET. So the free solutions are the best.

All of which means we're in a slightly confusing spot. VB5/VB6 are supported by InDesign, but aren't being sold. VB.NET is being sold, but doesn't work well with InDesign. VBScript works fine, but isn't a complete development environment (and has been disabled by some folks for security reasons--though, frankly, that seems like "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"). VBA works, but ties you to using Office applications to do your InDesign scripting.

So--the good news is that there are lots of free options that work with InDesign. The bad news is that the InDesign scripting guy frequently loses his mind trying to keep up with them.<g>

Thanks,

Ole