I don't know if ESA will accept it, but one option is the XML spreadsheet format used by OpenOffice.org. It would be a bit of a pain to convert all o= f your spreadsheets, but no more than saving them as ASCII files. This format is fully open, well-documented, and will save both equations and comments. Although it can be opened as a "regular" spreadsheet file, the spreadsheet file is actually a compressed set of text XML files, so as long as it is possible to read text files it will be possible to get the data back out, even in the absence of OpenOffice.
The office suite in question is open source and a free download from www.openoffice.org and the open document standard is discussed on that web page. Oh, and the office suite is cross-platform, with Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris and BSD binaries available. (And conveniently, you can open files saved on one OS on another OS with no trouble, and can also open MicroSoft spreadsheet, document and presentation files.) OpenOffice will read Excel files with very little problem, unless you have very complex equations or VBA scripting. Sarah On 1/20/06, David Inouye <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I have a large number (900+) of Excel spreadsheets from a 30-year > (and ongoing) study of flowering phenology from the Rocky Mountain > Biological Laboratory, with each spreadsheet including data from one > 2x2 plot that was surveyed every other day for the growing season. To > publish these data as an ESA data paper they have to be converted to > ASCII, as no proprietary formats are accepted. -- Sarah Goslee http://www.stringpage.com
