Thanks Nathan, I was waiting for someone to post a response like yours :)
Dave Nathan Kennedy wrote: > Hehe. I was waiting for someone to post a rant like that :) > > Thanks, > Nathan > Web Controlled Robot Arm and Beetle > http://www.kennedytechnology.com > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave > Lane > Sent: Thursday, 30 October 2008 4:04 p.m. > To: [email protected] > Subject: [phpug] Re: What do we use for reading excel files in PHP5? > > > Something to keep in mind: MS Office file formats, despite their > widespread use are *closed proprietary* formats, and you have to pay a > substantial license fee to provide compatibility with them. Other > packages, e.g. OpenOffice, that offer compatibility with MS Office > formats do so only as the result of massive reverse engineering efforts. > > The fact that you've been able to get info out of those file formats in > the past was probably due to some hacker sitting down with a binary MS > Office file and poking and prodding it until the managed to get some > semblance of compatibility. Of course, it was short lived: > > <rant>To maintain their file format-based lock-in, Microsoft change > their file format (often quite subtly) every release at least in part to > force developers of those would-be competing applications to start again > from square one. > > Perhaps those who think that Microsoft is a "nice" or even a fair > company can start to see why they've been convicted of being a criminal > monopoly in the US and EU jurisdictions (among others)... > > Microsoft have strongly back the US's adoption of the DMCA (Digital > Millennium Copyright Act) which among other draconian measures makes the > sort of reverse-engineering that the OpenOffice developers try to do > illegal in the US. That has pushed much of that development out of the > US. (Of course, as a condition for gaining a "free trade agreement" > with the US, NZ will have to implement ACTA and other similarly > draconian pro-corporate-monopoly legislation to help protect US > interests in NZ). > > If you want to be able to integrate your applications with word > processor documents, spreadsheets, etc., then I suggest looking at Open > Document Format or ODF (used as the native formats for OpenOffice, > Abiword, Gnumeric, KOffice, Lotus SmartSuite, and available in Google > Docs, etc.), which is a set of properly open, ISO recognised file > formats (like the HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.1, or other file formats). > > MS will reportedly be supporting ODF formats in the next release of MS > Office - not because they want to (and I'm sure their lawyers are trying > to find a way out of it), but because > a) governments worldwide are demanding an *open* file format, > b) the European Union is forcing them as part of their anti-competitive > penalties, > c) and because their own attempt at producing an ISO standard format, > OOXML, turned out to be a total debacle (bringing the whole ISO > standardisation process into disrepute), was trying to supplant the > pre-existing ODF standard, and was un-implementable besides. > > Might not help you with your current problem, but it does explain why > you're having it. > </rant> > > Cheers, > > Dave > > > > > -- Dave Lane = Egressive Ltd = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = m: +64 21 229 8147 p: +64 3 9633733 = Linux: it just tastes better = nosoftwarepatents http://egressive.com ==== we only use open standards: http://w3.org Effusion Group Founding Member =========== http://effusiongroup.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
