Re: FN-FORUM: PHP generate xls

date posted 30th October 2007 20:56

On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 09:34:43PM -0000, [EMAIL REMOVED] wrote:
>
> Alain Williams:-
> - How many people run office 2007 ? Most don't so you will be
> - producing something that most people cannot read.
>
> You don't need Office 2007, converters are available for older versions of
> Excel.

Presumably this is for download from a web page .... why make your user
have to get/install/run some program when you could simply generate it
in a format that s/he could use in the first place.
These converters:
* are they free or do your visitors need to pay for them ?
* what do they run on ? Available for Mac, Linux, ... ?

> - What is wrong with non-ms components ?
> They don't actually know the XLS file format in most cases, they can
> purchase the file spec, but very few of them do.

Errrrm, not always available. M$ does not like to reveal it's file formats
because if others could reliably write the formats then their grip on
the market would loosen (look at the fuss that it has had with the EU,
it remains to be seen if they will really comply and document their
file formats). That is why you are better sticking with older
formats because people have had longer to reverse engineer them & get
it right.

> - Correct. But excel is not the only program capable of generating
> - .xls (or other) spreadsheets.
>
> True, and if you don't need to run any components at all and can just drop
> out some XML then that is far better IMHO.

Yes, but not OOXML since that is not properly defined -- in spite of what
M$ claims. ODT format is properly defined, you could try that.

--
Alain Williams
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
Chairman of UKUUG: http://www.ukuug.org/
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