RE: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 13:55 -0400, Bob McConnell wrote: From: Bastien Koert On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Michael A. Peters mpet...@mac.com wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:21:22AM +0100, Peter Ford wrote: Matt Graham wrote: But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? CSV doesn't export *formulas*, just the visible numbers. gnumeric handles everything excel that I have ever needed, and is FOSS. I believe OpenOffice also does very well. That being said, you are more likely to find excel installed than either of those, excel is the spreadsheet standard at this point, and both those products mentioned handle most excel files, so saving as excel should (in most cases) be plenty portable. unless you run into xlsx format office 2007... From what I have heard so far, OOo.org is better at reading and writing xlsx than Office 2007 SP2 is with ODF. Early reviews suggest that Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot, again. But what does this have to do with PHP? Bob McConnell There are dozens of distros out there that are offered as portable app solutions. You can run an entire OS from the USB key, and have the open-source software on there that you need, like Fx (to use Firefox's proper abbreviation), OOo, Gimp, etc. That way, it won't matter what the end user has installed on their computer, as you have everything you need right there. Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
Matt Graham wrote: Ashley Sheridan wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. It has to be a CD-RW, the CD-RW has to be in UDF format, and the host machine has to be able to read and rewrite CD-RWs in UDF. This is actually not that tough to arrange--it just has nothing to do with PHP. 'DozeXP should be able to do this, and Linux will do this if the right kernel options are on. Don't know about OS X. Second, include some other program which would do the same thing. Good luck with that. OOO Calc, which should be just fine for basic tasks and is Free. And now the kicker-- write the spreadsheet back to CD. Okay, maybe, if it's a CD-RW. But who's going to pay attention to that little detail? And as far as I know, writing to a CD is far more complicated than writing to a hard drive. You can't overwrite data on a CD-RW. UDF, which has been a standard for quite some time, allows this. The main thing you lose is some space on the CD-RW. I've never heard of anything like that, there are so many unknown variables that I would really feel for the poor team who had to take that project on! It sounds like whoever defined the requirements was trying to solve a problem in the wrong way. Why drag physical media into this when you have the Net available? And if the clients don't have the Net available, *why not*? It *is* possible to be offline, and so far from anywhere that the only com links are to satellites... (expensive). I suspect that a USB key is a better option (and more physically portable) than a UFB CD. But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? -- Peter Ford phone: 01580 89 Developer fax: 01580 893399 Justcroft International Ltd., Staplehurst, Kent -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:21:22AM +0100, Peter Ford wrote: Matt Graham wrote: Ashley Sheridan wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. snip It *is* possible to be offline, and so far from anywhere that the only com links are to satellites... (expensive). I suspect that a USB key is a better option (and more physically portable) than a UFB CD. But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? CSV doesn't export *formulas*, just the visible numbers. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:21:22AM +0100, Peter Ford wrote: Matt Graham wrote: But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? CSV doesn't export *formulas*, just the visible numbers. gnumeric handles everything excel that I have ever needed, and is FOSS. I believe OpenOffice also does very well. That being said, you are more likely to find excel installed than either of those, excel is the spreadsheet standard at this point, and both those products mentioned handle most excel files, so saving as excel should (in most cases) be plenty portable. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Michael A. Peters mpet...@mac.com wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:21:22AM +0100, Peter Ford wrote: Matt Graham wrote: But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? CSV doesn't export *formulas*, just the visible numbers. gnumeric handles everything excel that I have ever needed, and is FOSS. I believe OpenOffice also does very well. That being said, you are more likely to find excel installed than either of those, excel is the spreadsheet standard at this point, and both those products mentioned handle most excel files, so saving as excel should (in most cases) be plenty portable. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php unless you run into xlsx format office 2007... -- Bastien Cat, the other other white meat
RE: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
From: Bastien Koert On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Michael A. Peters mpet...@mac.com wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:21:22AM +0100, Peter Ford wrote: Matt Graham wrote: But why write an Excel spreadsheet - why not save the data in something more portable like CSV that ExCel and read and write to once you are back at base? CSV doesn't export *formulas*, just the visible numbers. gnumeric handles everything excel that I have ever needed, and is FOSS. I believe OpenOffice also does very well. That being said, you are more likely to find excel installed than either of those, excel is the spreadsheet standard at this point, and both those products mentioned handle most excel files, so saving as excel should (in most cases) be plenty portable. unless you run into xlsx format office 2007... From what I have heard so far, OOo.org is better at reading and writing xlsx than Office 2007 SP2 is with ODF. Early reviews suggest that Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot, again. But what does this have to do with PHP? Bob McConnell -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
Hey all, I'm inheriting a project that was unsuccessfully off-shored and is now in such bad shape (I've seen the code. It's awful) that they are firing the off-shore company and starting over. One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. This is part of the requirements. Does anyone know of such software and its name? Thanks, Skip -- Skip Evans Big Sky Penguin, LLC 503 S Baldwin St, #1 Madison WI 53703 608.250.2720 http://bigskypenguin.com Those of you who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. -- Kurt Vonnegut -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: Hey all, I'm inheriting a project that was unsuccessfully off-shored and is now in such bad shape (I've seen the code. It's awful) that they are firing the off-shore company and starting over. One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. This is part of the requirements. Does anyone know of such software and its name? Maybe offshore, but not here. There are only two possibilities. First include a copy of Excel on the CD and somehow make it autorun. Yeah, Microsoft would *love* that. Second, include some other program which would do the same thing. Good luck with that. And now the kicker-- write the spreadsheet back to CD. Okay, maybe, if it's a CD-RW. But who's going to pay attention to that little detail? And as far as I know, writing to a CD is far more complicated than writing to a hard drive. You can't overwrite data on a CD-RW. Once written, it's written. You have to cover up the section that was written to (in software), and then write the contents again. Eventually, you'll run out of room. And it almost necessitates having a copy of some CD-writing software on the CD, since there may not be such software on the client machine. And all this assumes the user is running Windows. The binaries for one OS won't run on a different OS. Now, watch. Someone will get on and say, Oh sure, you can do that with such-and-such software. I did it the other day. In which case, just forget I said anything. ;-} Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 16:50 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: Hey all, I'm inheriting a project that was unsuccessfully off-shored and is now in such bad shape (I've seen the code. It's awful) that they are firing the off-shore company and starting over. One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. This is part of the requirements. Does anyone know of such software and its name? Maybe offshore, but not here. There are only two possibilities. First include a copy of Excel on the CD and somehow make it autorun. Yeah, Microsoft would *love* that. Second, include some other program which would do the same thing. Good luck with that. And now the kicker-- write the spreadsheet back to CD. Okay, maybe, if it's a CD-RW. But who's going to pay attention to that little detail? And as far as I know, writing to a CD is far more complicated than writing to a hard drive. You can't overwrite data on a CD-RW. Once written, it's written. You have to cover up the section that was written to (in software), and then write the contents again. Eventually, you'll run out of room. And it almost necessitates having a copy of some CD-writing software on the CD, since there may not be such software on the client machine. And all this assumes the user is running Windows. The binaries for one OS won't run on a different OS. Now, watch. Someone will get on and say, Oh sure, you can do that with such-and-such software. I did it the other day. In which case, just forget I said anything. ;-} Paul -- Paul M. Foster I've never heard of anything like that, there are so many unknown variables that I would really feel for the poor team who had to take that project on! You could do it with a USB drive and a small Linux distro that was set to run as a boot disk though, and it could do a whole lot more than just open a spreadsheet up! Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
Paul M Foster wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: Hey all, I'm inheriting a project that was unsuccessfully off-shored and is now in such bad shape (I've seen the code. It's awful) that they are firing the off-shore company and starting over. One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. This is part of the requirements. Does anyone know of such software and its name? Maybe offshore, but not here. There are only two possibilities. First include a copy of Excel on the CD and somehow make it autorun. Yeah, Microsoft would *love* that. Second, include some other program which would do the same thing. Good luck with that. And now the kicker-- write the spreadsheet back to CD. Okay, maybe, if it's a CD-RW. But who's going to pay attention to that little detail? And as far as I know, writing to a CD is far more complicated than writing to a hard drive. You can't overwrite data on a CD-RW. Once written, it's written. You have to cover up the section that was written to (in software), and then write the contents again. Eventually, you'll run out of room. And it almost necessitates having a copy of some CD-writing software on the CD, since there may not be such software on the client machine. And all this assumes the user is running Windows. The binaries for one OS won't run on a different OS. Now, watch. Someone will get on and say, Oh sure, you can do that with such-and-such software. I did it the other day. In which case, just forget I said anything. ;-} Paul or take the easy approach and use a memory card instead - or better yet inform them that you are a web developer and in these crazy modern times you can actually do this online or even save to the internet - crazy as it may seem. and finally, the offshore company was fired for a reason, just say no they were talking bollocks but we can offer you x y and z google spreadsheets -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Software to read/write Excel to CD?
Ashley Sheridan wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 03:22:12PM -0500, Skip Evans wrote: One of the things the other company said was possible, and I'm not familiar with... if I understand correctly, is to create a CD with not just an Excel spreadsheet, but software on that CD that when placed in another computer will open the spreadsheet, allow it to be modified and rewritten back to the CD. It has to be a CD-RW, the CD-RW has to be in UDF format, and the host machine has to be able to read and rewrite CD-RWs in UDF. This is actually not that tough to arrange--it just has nothing to do with PHP. 'DozeXP should be able to do this, and Linux will do this if the right kernel options are on. Don't know about OS X. Second, include some other program which would do the same thing. Good luck with that. OOO Calc, which should be just fine for basic tasks and is Free. And now the kicker-- write the spreadsheet back to CD. Okay, maybe, if it's a CD-RW. But who's going to pay attention to that little detail? And as far as I know, writing to a CD is far more complicated than writing to a hard drive. You can't overwrite data on a CD-RW. UDF, which has been a standard for quite some time, allows this. The main thing you lose is some space on the CD-RW. I've never heard of anything like that, there are so many unknown variables that I would really feel for the poor team who had to take that project on! It sounds like whoever defined the requirements was trying to solve a problem in the wrong way. Why drag physical media into this when you have the Net available? And if the clients don't have the Net available, *why not*? -- Matt G / Dances With Crows The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
