From koffice-devel Sat Nov 09 12:34:33 2002 From: Nicolas Goutte Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 12:34:33 +0000 To: koffice-devel Subject: Re: export excel X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=koffice-devel&m=103684537032397 On Saturday 09 November 2002 02:11, Fred Malabre wrote: > On Friday 08 November 2002 10:13 am, T.J. Mather wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I have been thinking about writing an Excel Export > > filter using Apache POI. It is very difficult to develop > > filters for MS Excel files, and it should be much easier to > > write an maintain a filter that re-uses an widely used > > and developed library (POI has several developers). The > > catch is that the MS Excel filter would depend on GCJ 3.2 > > or greater, but as all the major distros (Mandrake, Redhat, etc) have > > moved to GCC 3.2, I see this issue going away with time (especially > > considering how much time it would take to develop a filter > > as good as the POI library with such limited resources that > > KOffice has). > > What is Apache POI? As far as I know, the POI is a library for Apache, which can write out Ex= cel=20 files. > I've never thought about mixing Java code with C++ code for a C++ progr= am. > Isn't that messy to do that? Is there parts of KOffice doing that? In a previous discussion, two problematic items were pointed out: - the Apache license of POI - the fact that you need GCC, so it is not portable on other compilers on= =20 non-Linux systems. The license is problematic, as it is not compactible with GPL, so you wou= ld=20 have to use all of QT's licenses with KDE. However licenses are not the k= ind=20 of "I take 50% of this and 50% of that." So some users/critics/... do not= =20 like such license mixings. ( We are not in quantum mechanics. ;-) ) One solution is to make the filter itself as an independant program and n= ot=20 using QT but for example libxml2 for reading XML. > > I know Java pretty well (it's what I use at work), but I don't feel lik= e > using it on KDE. > > So, you guys believe it's a bad idea to write a filter from scratch? I'= ve > never done that, neither looked any code from KOffice, so I may have no > clue where I'm going.. No, it is not necessarily a bad idea. A filter completely in C++ would be= more=20 portable and more usable outside Linux. The problem is as always documentation and manpower. If the manpower is w= asted=20 by having to guess lacks of or in documentation, you might prefer to help= an=20 already existing project. =2E However in KOffice, especially in the filters, it is the person who devel= ops=20 the code who pretty much decide in which direction the code goes. > Have a nice day/evening/night! > _______________________________________________ > koffice-devel mailing list > koffice-devel@mail.kde.org > http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice-devel _______________________________________________ koffice-devel mailing list koffice-devel@mail.kde.org http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice-devel