That would be exactly the best thing to do. Post a patch or two to bugzilla, secondly make the source available. But before we could incorporate it you'd have to certify that you/the developers never received any information regarding the file format under a Non-disclosure agreement.
Thanks for understanding, we get a lot of these lately, most don't pan out. On Mon, 2002-04-22 at 19:17, Chris Tregenza wrote: > Fair comment. What would be a good demonstration of feasibility? I'm > perfectly willing to extract say the formula stuff or any other area not yet > implemented in HSSF and put it in a more usable form. > > Chris > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Andrew C. Oliver [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 23:34 > To: POI Development > Subject: Re: Fw: Hopefully useful code donation > > > Its up to any contributer or committer who wants to look at it. I've > gotten my fill of "Come look at my code and figure out what it does and > see if it has anything useful" -- So far I've failed usually to figure > out what their code did and often WHERE it is. I'm more interested in > code donations that come along with smart people than I am code for us > to maintain. Thats just my opinion. Not that I don't appreciate the > sentiment, its just a lot of work for us to do with no proof of > feasibility. In this case proof of infeasibility (unavailability of the > author). > > On Mon, 2002-04-22 at 10:09, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote: > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Chris Tregenza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 3:16 PM > > Subject: Hopefully useful code donation > > > > > > > Hello all, > > > > > > I've have written an Excel file reader in Java as part of developing a > > > product for the company I work for. This was started a couple of years > ago > > > before the HSSF project existed otherwise I would of saved myself an > awful > > > lot of work. After some discussion I have persuaded the company (who > > > wishes to remain nameless due to the market we operate in) to release > this > > > code to the HSSF. > > > > > > What the code does is read Excel 97 files and makes the data available > via > > > a variety of classes. As this has been done to fulfil our needs it only > > > handles data types that are important to our product. Critically (I > > > believe) to the HSSF is that we fully support formulas* and named > ranges. > > > > > > I don't imagine that my code (which is pretty rough** in places) can be > > > dropped into the HSSF but I hope that it useful as either a) something > > > that be quickly cannibalised and used in HSSF until something better > gets > > > written or b) as a reference implementation to help with some of the > > > undocumented nasties floating around in the Excel. > > > > > > Clearly it isn't suitable for submitting to the POI CVS so I propose to > > > put the code up on a web site so that others on this list can use it as > > > required. > > > > > > Our companies plan is not to developed our code any further and when > HSSF > > > has all the functionality we need, we will replace our code with HSSF. > > > Because of deadlines etc I'm not going to be able work on the HSSF code > > > for a while but hopefully I will have useful advice to offer in the > > > meantime. > > > > > > Chris Tregenza > > > > > > > > > *By this I mean it reads the Excel ptgs and produces a human readable > > > string identical to that displayed in Excel. It doesn't do any sort of > > > calculations. > > > > > > ** This is an understatement. When I started writing this code I had > only > > > a few months experience of Java and no idea about the Excel file format. > > > > > > -- > http://www.superlinksoftware.com > http://jakarta.apache.org/poi - port of Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound > Document > 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 > -- http://www.superlinksoftware.com http://jakarta.apache.org/poi - port of Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound Document 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
