This discussion reminds me of the reasons why I'm excited about the Vistrails plugin for QGIS (see http://code.googlegroups.com/p/eo4vistrails/). Has anyone given it a try yet? On Dec 1, 2011 11:34 PM, "Alister Hood" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Tim, > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Tim Sutton [mailto:[email protected]] > > Sent: Friday, 2 December 2011 7:16 p.m. > > To: Alister Hood > > Cc: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] Re: Excel Export from QGIS > > > > Hi Alister > > > > On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 12:55 AM, Alister Hood > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi everybody, > > > Just a couple of thoughts: > > > > > > As others have mentioned, many people want to export to Excel mainly > > for > > > formatting and printing, perhaps with some added calculations. The > > > ideal would be to improve formatting and printing in QGIS so that > > this > > > isn't necessary. > > > Spreadsheets aren't particularly great for it anyway, and doing it in > > > QGIS would mean that you wouldn't need to export and format again if > > the > > > data is updated. > > > I imagine this could eventually be quite a lot of work - perhaps it > > > would be a good idea for a Summer of Code project. I guess it would > > > include work on: > > > - table formatting > > > - number formatting (also see #4426, although that is not about > > > specifying how data in an existing column is displayed). > > > - virtual columns (similar to the new expression based labelling). > > > - easy breaking of tables across multiple pages, page numbering etc. > > > > > > Some people also like to export data to Excel, modify it, and bring > > it > > > back into GIS. Like someone said, this is a recipe for headaches, if > > > not disaster. I think it would be great if we could identify any > > > further enhancements to the attribute table and the field calculator > > > which would help people not to do this. > > > > > > > I recently used a python library called xlwt for a web project to > > generate spreadsheets. I think it should be fairly straightforward to > > create a python plugin that would allow you to do it. I'm not familiar > > with a C++ library for writing excel spreadsheets, but I guess there > > is one out there somewhere. > > Sure, import/export of spreadsheet formats would definitely be nice. It > would be great if someone implemented it. > And I'm not saying it would be a technical disaster; more of an > organisational disaster. After a user exports to excel and formats it all > nicely for printing, they would need to export and format again every time > they want to print, if the original data changes. Hopefully they won't be > doing much in Excel other than formatting to get the data ready for > printing, or it could get quite painful. > If they're exporting to Excel to process the data and then import it back > into QGIS, there will be all sorts of added complications e.g. because of > separating the attribute data from the features, and because Excel won't > respect and preserve the data type of each field. > > I'm an engineer - I work with Word and Excel all day every day. But often > (or perhaps mostly) they are not really the right tools for the job, and we > need to do all sorts of nasty hackery to get the job done. > Basically I'm just saying that in most of the cases where someone would go > from QGIS to Excel, Excel is not the ideal tool for the job, and with some > improvements QGIS definitely would be. > > Alister > _______________________________________________ > Qgis-developer mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer >
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