Re: Nice project for Gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 04:14:53AM +0900, Yukihiro Nakai wrote:
> >     Supporting additional attributes of xls objects.
> >
> > This would mean that that funky complex spreadsheet from Ameritrade
> > with all the buttons and whistles will start looking as you'd
> > expect.  We have full published mostly useful docs on the file
> > format of these things.  There is even an implementation for some of
> > them to use as a template.
> >
> > Please contact me or the list if you're interested.  Our operators
> > are standing by !
>
> I'm investigating some Japanese attributes as my daytime job now.
> I know there is a thick Excel format doc on OOo site,
> but don't for Gnumeric. Where is it?

The attributes I'm thinking of are not documented in OO's Ms Excel
file format reference.  They were handled in the 'Excel 97
Developers Kit', and were on msdn around 1998 1999.  I've got a copy
of the book, and believe fair use will allow me to send a copy of
the relevant pages to a few friends for the purposes of discussion.

However, your knowledge of Japanese and Ms Excel features specific to 
any of the asian languages is far more valuable than adding a few
bells and whistles to the set of drawing objects.  I'm especially
interested in the function
    'PHONETIC'
and other worksheet functions that are not shown in the North
American version.  The test cases you've sent me to date have been
quite helpful.  If you have time, I'd love to see our xls
import/export stressed more with japanese files.  The string
handling should be solid.  However, the is a notion of a 'far east'
flag for strings, that isn't clearly explained.  Some concrete
examples that would show where its needed would be nice.