>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Geir Magnusson Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 6:55 PM
>>
>>
>> On 1/6/02 12:58 PM, "Paulo Gaspar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> If you start at the top of the thread, I declare I am playing devils'
>> advocate, and addressing the three URLs that andrew gave.
> The Devil's advocate gets flamed as any other one or more, didn't you
> know?
> =;o)
hehe
>> I don't think it "should" be used for anything - that's up to the
>> users and I would never try to make an assertion to that end.
> YYYEEEESSSSsssss!!!
When I said "should" I was expressing a personal opinion. Like when I
say people "should" NOT use Windows. That would be my personal
opinion. Being wrong is a human right of sorts ,so everyone is free to
disagree with me. :-D
>> To give you the benefit of the doubt that I wasn't clear, change
>> "would be" to "currently is" as that is what I meant.
>>
>> The dissonance that struck me was between the thing that makes
>> POI different
>> - the ability to write xls files - and what I read to be the most
>> common use
>> - reading xls for serverside presentation and indexing.
>>
>> I'm just trying to figure this out.
> I also got surprised by that one but is was exactly what made me
> realize how much "server side" (here we go again) it was.
Actuate will charge you $10K to write XLS files in Java on your server.
(supply and demand... If POI becomes a Jakarta project there may be a
little downward pressure on that price -- perhaps it will happen
anyhow.).
> It looks like our POVs on this are being heavily influenced by our
> current work experience and needs... which are different.
I think you hit it on the nail. Not to speak for anyone but these are
my impressions: Talk to Stefano and he talks about content editing and
publishing. Talk to me about POI::HSSF and you hear principally about
reporting systems and POI::HDF for publishing. Talk to Marc and you
hear more about Cocoon 2 and document management systems and what he
calls a "translator". He clarifies with "with the exception of document
viewers I see mostly server side use". (I'll let him clarify if he
likes he doesn't subscribe to the list though)
We have some users who are using HSSF to dump their database and
transmit (from what I gather) -- I said they are....I didn't say they
"should" :-p.
I see this disagreement as an awesome and wonderful thing. It means POI
provides general use APIs that are atomic enough that people can think
of lots of things to do with them that their author never thought of.
That's just good software.
My personal use of POI in future contracts or jobs (if it ever
happens...sigh) is probably through Lucene and Cocoon 2.
I think its incorrect to say that document publishing in those formats
or reporting in those formats is niche. These are the most popular
formats in the world for rich Documents and Spreadsheets, etc.
>> ...
>>
>> The fact that Velocity can generate HTML doesn't make it special.
> Yes, it is the HOW that is quite especial!
> =:o)
>>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Are there many uses for writing Word/Excel documents in a
>client-side
>>>>> device that has not Word or Excel installed???
>>>>
>>>> You might find this unbelieveable, but not everyone works on a
>>>> computer that runs an operating system that has Word or Excel
>available.
>>>
>>> And is there many people NOT having Word or Excel installed that
>care
>about
>>> writing Word and Excel documents in a CLIENT device???
>>
>> YES. Anyone who uses Linux is an example. (sorry, I've found
>>open-office
>> and gnumeric don't really cut it...)
This is a little off topic but you brought up gnumeric and open office.
JUST FYI, The POI::HSSFSerializer (for Cocoon 2) uses gnumeric's tag
language. Its really a very cool thing. You can:
1. Take a gnumeric XML spreadsheet (unzip it) ...OR..
2. use the SQL stuff, a stylesheet to make it gnumeric like and
serialize it to XLS!
The upcoming HSSFGenerator (for Cocoon 2) will take XLS and turn it into
a gnumeric XML spreadsheet.
We didn't use OpenOffice format because it uses multiple xml files to
represent a spreadsheet. I'm not smart enough to figure that one out so
I'll let smarter people write stylesheets for that :-p.
> But POI is no replacement for that.
POI has no GUIs and will not have GUIs as long as I have any say in the
matter. GUIs COULD use POI. I just don't know if I think a Java Office
Suite is the best idea I ever heard of.
> You just add to the argument that there is not much use for writing a
> Word/Excel document in a client device without Word/Excel... in the >
way
>that POI does.
>The use for POI is to write the doc in a server to send the document to
>a
>client that has Word/Excel or some future version of OpenOffice.
>=;o)
You can of course read it and put the data into the database or make
some XML or make some PDF or whatever you like. The POI libraries don't
mind.
BTW I've not said anything because I'm not pedantic but just for
clarity:
POI = project
POIFS = API/port of M$ OLE2 CDF file format (which all office docs use
and someone told me C# classes are stored in it but I dunno)
HSSF = API/port of M$ Excel 97 file format (which uses POIFS)
HDF = API/port of M$ Word 97 file format (uses POIFS)
POI-UTIL = common classes used for all (endian stuff, Unicode stuff,
String utils, Bitfields, collections and other cool stuff. These would
all go in commons. The only big overlap is the endian stream.)
> This is not about POI being "server side" or "client side" in terms of
> being acceptable for Jakarta. I think that we already cleared that
side
> (its too subjective and up to the users.)
> This is just about POI usefulness.
POIs usefulness speaks for itself. Yesterday 785 people thought poi was
useful enough idea to download. I'd like to think some of them actually
used it ;-p. (otherwise what a waste of bandwidth)...
Whatever they are using it for even if they are doing things that they
"should" not with it I can't say for sure. (Ken made me take the
surveys off or I'd ask :-p)
> However, of course that I want to write such formats on a SERVER
device
> without any MS stuff (Linux), so that clients WITH MS software
installed
> can read them.
>
> ...
There are even compelling reasons to use POI in an M$ environment. Then
again, there are more compelling reasons to use POI on your server than
have an M$ environment :-p.
>Have fun,
>Paulo Gaspar
Anyhow I could go on all day about POI. Its one of my favorite
subjects. I'll have more fun when the snow melts.
-Andy
--
www.superlinksoftware.com
www.sourceforge.net/projects/poi - port of Excel format to java
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4487555.html
- fix java generics!
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to
vote.
-Ambassador Kosh
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