Re: Microsoft XML
Yes, I've never had a client complaint with this method. And since the resulting file acquires a nice icon and can be double-clicked to open, it looks and feels like an Excel document. Actually it's BETTER as the client can load the created document, then add it to an existing workbook, do a little column adjusting and save as an Excel spreadsheet. The 'launch' command causes the file to be opened with Excel, since the file was written with a fileType of XCELTEXT. HTH - Phil Davis ___ -- stephen barncard s a n f r a n c i s c o - - - - - - - - - - - - ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Has anyone looked at the native format used by Apple's Numbers? Some interesting history might help with this question... many years ago (1989?) Apple purchased the kernel for their spreadsheet used in AppleWorks from WingZ (now long since defunct). They paid $1,000,000 for it. I know this because I was using WingZ 1.0 and absolutely love the program. It had (even at 1.0) far more capability than MS's skinned down bleached out program. WingZ went bust, I suppose, for lack of market. Anyhow, the current version of AppleWorks can accept a cut and paste of the data and formulae from WingZ. However, since Apple did not implement ALL of WingZ capabilities some things don't work as well. It is PRESUMED the new Numbers spreadsheet is a derivative of all this. If not I reckon it's sol time (again). On the other hand, the original code for WingZ 3.0 was dumped to the web as a Linux program. Not being a Linux programmer I was not able to get it to run on Mac - though I do have that code in the event anyone wants it, let me know. Life, Light, Love Laughter, Dale Pond Sympathetic Vibratory Physics http://www.svpvril.com/ Passive Income Shopping Online http://www.mypowermall.com/Biz/Home/17477 ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Dale Pond wrote: Some interesting history might help with this question... many years ago (1989?) Apple purchased the kernel for their spreadsheet used in AppleWorks from WingZ (now long since defunct). They paid $1,000,000 for it. I know this because I was using WingZ 1.0 and absolutely love the program. It had (even at 1.0) far more capability than MS's skinned down bleached out program. WingZ went bust, I suppose, for lack of market. Anyhow, the current version of AppleWorks can accept a cut and paste of the data and formulae from WingZ. However, since Apple did not implement ALL of WingZ capabilities some things don't work as well. So that's who killed Wingz. I've always wondered about that. Wingz was an unusually useful program, and when it was EOL'd I never really understood why; it was so original that I felt the only problem with it was its marketing, the challenge of selling something that so redefines the spreadsheet. I've long advocated such an approach, doing away with the inflexibility of row-and-column fixation which characterizes most of the market, and which arguably is just a holdover from pre-GUI character-driven displays. But it's a tough sell: so many people have become so used to being bound to the limits of traditional spreadsheets that it's difficult for them to conceive of a more open way of working. I have a half-dozen prototypes on my hard drive experimenting with a similarly free-form approach to making a calculation tool like this. The combination of the marketing challenge, Excel's dominance, and Rev's lack of column alignment kept it on the backburner. I can't feel to badly that Apple's beating me to the punch on delivering this, since it almost requires a company of their size to validate such an unusual approach to get people to take it seriously. One odd anomaly with Numbers, though: no macro/scripting language? Strange omission -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Richard Gaskin wrote: So that's who killed Wingz. I've always wondered about that. Wingz was an unusually useful program, and when it was EOL'd I never really understood why; it was so original that I felt the only problem with it was its marketing, the challenge of selling something that so redefines the spreadsheet. I've long advocated such an approach, doing away with the inflexibility of row-and-column fixation which characterizes most of the market, and which arguably is just a holdover from pre-GUI character-driven displays. But it's a tough sell: so many people have become so used to being bound to the limits of traditional spreadsheets that it's difficult for them to conceive of a more open way of working. I have a half-dozen prototypes on my hard drive experimenting with a similarly free-form approach to making a calculation tool like this. The combination of the marketing challenge, Excel's dominance, and Rev's lack of column alignment kept it on the backburner. I can't feel to badly that Apple's beating me to the punch on delivering this, since it almost requires a company of their size to validate such an unusual approach to get people to take it seriously. One odd anomaly with Numbers, though: no macro/scripting language? Strange omission == I apologize to everyone about this off topic issue. WingZ and HyperCard were so VASTLY important to me and my research - still are - but I see the EOL fast approaching - unless someone can get WingZ 3.0 going on a Mac and I can convert over all my HC work. WingZ could be scripted almost as easily as HyperCard. I'd say the general user public was not interested in such flexibility and power. Programmers would be though. I located some links to the program: A good article on and about the program, etc. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Investment+Intelligence+Announces +Release+of+Wingz+and+Wingz+...-a053426836 Download the WingZ program from here: http://www.ibiblio.org/linsearch/cgi-bin/isearch Life, Light, Love Laughter, Dale Pond Sympathetic Vibratory Physics http://www.svpvril.com/ Passive Income Shopping Online http://www.mypowermall.com/Biz/Home/17477 ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Hi Another spreadsheet application I looked at recently is a simple one called Tables (http://www.x-tables.eu/), but decided to wait till Apple's Numbers came out. Personally I like tables views (rows/columns) because they are an efficient way to view lots of information quickly and still find it annoying Rev's built-in tables aren't very flexible. Found Wingz at: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/financial/spreadsheet/ Readme for Wingz says it supports: Linux, Windows95/98/NT, Solaris, AIX, SunOS, HPUX, IRIX, Mac Seems to be available only as linux binary unfortunately no source code :( I am keen to check out Wingz Numbers and their respective approaches to working with financials. Unfortunately, I've still out bush with my limited wireless broadband Macbook (which only has mac windows). Didn't have time to add a linux partition :( So I will try again when I get back to civilization (miss my nice warm studio). Never been a big expert on spreadsheet applications but my knowledge is growing every day, thanks everyone. regards alex Dale Pond wrote: Richard Gaskin wrote: snip One odd anomaly with Numbers, though: no macro/scripting language? Strange omission == I apologize to everyone about this off topic issue. WingZ and HyperCard were so VASTLY important to me and my research - still are - but I see the EOL fast approaching - unless someone can get WingZ 3.0 going on a Mac and I can convert over all my HC work. WingZ could be scripted almost as easily as HyperCard. I'd say the general user public was not interested in such flexibility and power. Programmers would be though. I located some links to the program: A good article on and about the program, etc. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Investment+Intelligence+Announces+Release+of+Wingz+and+Wingz+...-a053426836 Download the WingZ program from here: http://www.ibiblio.org/linsearch/cgi-bin/isearch ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Microsoft XML
Hi I was thinking how nice it would be if a project of mine could natively read write excel documents. Should be easy to write a parser in rev, right? Well after reading this article that idea has be thrown into the wastebin. http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html regards alex ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
I should have said something on digg.com about #2. I don't really consider #2 a problem. It has to do with converting decimal to binary. Excel stores numbers as numbers, not as text, and there is no way to store 12345.12345 in binary as exactly that. -- Peter T. Evensen Juice Plus+ Independent Distributor 314-629-5248 or 888-628-4588 http://www.PetersRoadToHealth.com Alex Shaw wrote: Hi I was thinking how nice it would be if a project of mine could natively read write excel documents. Should be easy to write a parser in rev, right? Well after reading this article that idea has be thrown into the wastebin. http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html regards alex ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:43:06 -0500, Peter T. Evensen wrote: I should have said something on digg.com about #2. I don't really consider #2 a problem. It has to do with converting decimal to binary. Excel stores numbers as numbers, not as text, and there is no way to store 12345.12345 in binary as exactly that. I guess the point is that this is in the *XML*, so everything is text. Excel is already doing a conversion from the internally stored numbers to a text representation that is displayed in the spreadsheet, so the complaint is that if the point of the XML format was to allow other, non-Windows, non-Microsoft apps to work with it, it should represent what's displayed in the spreadsheet exactly in the XML. On the other hand, if the intention of the XML format was to *appear* to be able to play with others, but in actuality was intended on only being used by Excel itself or other Microsoft products (or only other Windows apps), then leaving it in the form that Excel internally stores data and making it accessible only through a Windows-only API would make sense. ;-) Ken Ray Sons of Thunder Software, Inc. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/ ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Hi In any case it makes it hard for small developers to want to support the maze-like format. 6000 pages?! Back to simple tab-delimited files for me or.. Has anyone looked at the native format used by Apple's Numbers? If that's simpler I can convince the client to buy that because they are Macintel-based. Just looking at the apple site it mentions Open Financial Exchange(OFX). This appears to be another Microsoft format but the 2.1.1 spec is only 665 pages long. Still a bit of reading. I think I'll get back into writing computer games after this project :) regards alex Peter T. Evensen wrote: I should have said something on digg.com about #2. I don't really consider #2 a problem. It has to do with converting decimal to binary. Excel stores numbers as numbers, not as text, and there is no way to store 12345.12345 in binary as exactly that. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Alex Shaw wrote: In any case it makes it hard for small developers to want to support the maze-like format. 6000 pages?! Not surprising. Remember, this is the company that can't even implement CSV consistently across their product line. I'm sure if you'd just use Microsoft-only tools on Microsoft-only OSes then Microsoft would provide you a Microsoft-only library to make it easy ;) -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Hi Alex, Alex Shaw wrote: Hi In any case it makes it hard for small developers to want to support the maze-like format. 6000 pages?! Back to simple tab-delimited files for me or.. Tab-delimited text can work! Since you're working on a Mac... Here's what I do for one client and it's close enough to a spreadsheet for their needs: on mouseUp -- make the output file set the fileType to XCELTEXT put reportContent() into url (file: fld outputFile) wait 1 tick -- open the output file if requested if the hilite of btn openOutputFile = true then launch document (fld outputFile) end if end mouseUp The 'launch' command causes the file to be opened with Excel, since the file was written with a fileType of XCELTEXT. HTH - Phil Davis ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Microsoft XML
Hi Phil Thanks for the tip! Yes, I've decided to keep things simple. I like challenges but figured this one was just gonna give me a headache :) regards alex Phil Davis wrote: Tab-delimited text can work! Since you're working on a Mac... Here's what I do for one client and it's close enough to a spreadsheet for their needs: on mouseUp -- make the output file set the fileType to XCELTEXT put reportContent() into url (file: fld outputFile) wait 1 tick -- open the output file if requested if the hilite of btn openOutputFile = true then launch document (fld outputFile) end if end mouseUp The 'launch' command causes the file to be opened with Excel, since the file was written with a fileType of XCELTEXT. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
