On Wednesday 12 August 2009, Paul A. Rubin wrote: > Dynamic link (user sees a table in the LyX doc, and can interact > with it, making changes in the spreadsheet). This would typically occur > with the user reading the finished product (PDF, DVI) in a viewer, not > reading it in LyX, so you get into issues of whether the viewer program > supports this sort of embedding. For instance, if you export the > document in HTML and view it in a browser, I think there are browser > plugins that let you edit a spreadsheet in situ (although I confess I've > never done it).
This kind of approach is possible in theory: for example, if you have a figure in LyX which is a Grace file, editing that file in Grace will change the figure in Lyx immediately. That is not the same as just editing an image: the Grace file is actually displayed in LyX using Grace in a command line mode. The problem with a spreadsheet is that Excel does not (as far as I know) have a command line interface. Neither does OpenOffice.org. Gnumeric has a Python API which might be usable, but I haven't tried it. The best possibility I'm aware of is the Perl module XLSperl (http://search.cpan.org/~jonallen/XLSperl-0.7/bin/XLSperl) which could be used to build an image from specified sheet, rows and columns. Once you have done this, the Perl script could be used in a converter (XLS->EPS, for example). But I don't think it would be a trivial task to do this. -- Les ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
