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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: export excel
From:       Nicolas Goutte <nicog () snafu ! de>
Date:       2002-11-09 12:34:33
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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 Excel 
files.

> I've never thought about mixing Java code with C++ code for a C++ program.
> 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 
non-Linux systems.

The license is problematic, as it is not compactible with GPL, so you would 
have to use all of QT's licenses with KDE. However licenses are not the kind 
of "I take 50% of this and 50% of that." So some users/critics/... do not 
like such license mixings. ( We are not in quantum mechanics. ;-)  )

One solution is to make the filter itself as an independant program and not 
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 like
> 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 
portable and more usable outside Linux.

The problem is as always documentation and manpower. If the manpower is wasted 
by having to guess lacks of or in documentation, you might prefer to help an 
already existing project.
.
However in KOffice, especially in the filters, it is the person who develops 
the code who pretty much decide in which direction the code goes.

>

Have a nice day/evening/night!

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