Re: Open Office file formats (Oasis-open) and gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 03:55:29PM -0500, Russell McOrmond wrote:
>   I am asking for the reverse:  To use code from an existing Gnumeric 
> plug-in outside of Gnumeric itself.

This is not really feasible.  Our filters translate between a file
format and native gnumeric data structures.
 
>   The existing Gnumeric plug-in to load Quattro Pro files (Corel Office)  
> is (as far as I understand) GPL.  In order to use this code in a plug-in
> that can possibly be used with OpenOffice.org we need to have code that is
> LGPL.  Either we need to get the existing code re-licensed, or need to
> start from scratch and write different code.

I do not understand.  As far as I understand it OO is GPL and SISSL,
with some LGPL for libraries they intent to export.

> Note: The ultimate direction is to do for Quattro import like what has
> been done with the Libwpd project http://libwpd.sourceforge.net/ for
> Wordperfect (word processing) files.  This same library is intended to be
> used by a stand-alone converter, a plug-in to OpenOffice.org, a plug-in
> to AbiWord and possibly by KWord in the future as well.

While these sorts of libraries seem feasible for word processors I
do not think they are likely to work for spreadsheets.  The ratio of
markup to content is too high in my opinion.
    - subtleties in expression syntax
    - differing value format capabilities
    - not to mention all of the higher order capabilities
      (autofilter, pivots etc)

If you can make do with a standalone commandline converter then I
can commit something that uses the gnumeric framework.  Its been a
long term request and we can probably knock something into shape if
there are people available to do some work on it.