Home » File Formats » Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer » Bug #5403

[2005-09-14 19:03 UTC] bgold at matrix-consultants dot com

Description:
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Many of the functions in this package provide inadequate description of their arguments.

For example, the worksheet->write() function should tell you to get a format with workbook->addFormat(). I managed to divine this from the examples, but precision is nice.

Other functions have worse problems. For example setColor says to use a string for the color name, but does not provide a list or reference for valid names. Or to use a numeric value in the range 8-64, without any specification of what those values mean.

Similarly for setAlign. I'm guessing that "left", "center", "right" are allowed, in addition to "merge". If there are any others, they should be listed. (currency? date/time?)

And how to use "setMerge" (or setAlign("merge")) should be on those pages. Again, I'm doing guesswork from the examples, but what exactly are the semantics? Will all cells formatted with the same Format object be merged? Or all adjacent cells formatted with _any_ Format object that specifies "merge"? If the latter, is there any way to get two adjacent sets of merged cells that don't merge together?

[2005-09-30 18:57 UTC] bgold at matrix-consultants dot com

Package Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer, but I recommend reviewing the docs for as many packages as you can spare time for. Or if you need help, I might spend a few evenings just looking for documentation problems. I ran across these problems because I was hoping to use the package to create Excel spreadsheets. But when I started using it, I discovered that it depends on COM. That means I could use it on my (Windows) desktop, but not on the (Linux) server where we deploy our webpages.

[2007-03-27 14:55 UTC] bgold at matrix-consultants dot com

I'm not sure if I was looking in the wrong place, or the documentation has been updated. But now I find good documentation for most of the functions.

The only exceptions:

setMerge/setAlign("merge"): which cells get merged? A couple of examples would be useful.

setColor: what is the meaning of the numeric values that are required to be in the range 8-64? For that matter, why that particular range?

[2007-03-27 15:00 UTC] bgold at matrix-consultants dot com

Oh, and with regard to my comment on 2005-09-30 18:57 UTC, I note that the package has been updated to no longer require COM. So next time I need to build a worksheet I will use Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer instead of the kludge I built last time: write the data and format info into a text file, then parse the text file with a JSP using the jxl package to build the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer will be cleaner, I think, and I won't need any intermediate files!