Re: How to build a program that can read the content of a very simple MS Excel file?

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 11:40:32AM +0700, Huge Mountain wrote:
> Thank all you for your help!
> 
> I have another question:
> I'm trying to get the binary format of MS Excel file with this book,
> excelfileformat.pdf from http://sc.openoffice.org/excelfileformat.pdf
> In part 5.4, page 81, we have:
> Structure of the Page Settings Block in the Worksheet Substream:
> ??? HORIZONTALPAGEBREAKS ???6.54
> ??? VERTICALPAGEBREAKS ???6.107
> ??? HEADER ???6.51
> ??? FOOTER ???6.44
> ??? HCENTER ???6.50 (BIFF3-BIFF8 only)
> ??? VCENTER ???6.106 (BIFF3-BIFF8 only)
> ??? LEFTMARGIN ???6.62
> ??? RIGHTMARGIN ???6.81
> ??? TOPMARGIN ???6.103
> ??? BOTTOMMARGIN ???6.11
> ??? PLS
> ??? SETUP ???6.89 (BIFF4-BIFF8 only)
> ??? BITMAP ???6.6 (BIFF8 only)
> Every record is described clearly, except PLS which isn't mentioned in this
> document. I don't know if it's a record or something else. I have been seen
> the binary format of a MS Excel file (created by MS Excel 2000). If I
> consider PLS as a record, with this excel file  I have PLS's ID is 77 (equal
> 4D in hex) and size of following data is 1454 byte.
> The excelfileformat document doesn't discribe PLS's format. Could you help
> me to know this "record"?

The the content of a PLS record is yet another instance of a record
within a record.  It is a binary blob of printer description data.
The wine (windows emulator) groups may know more.

PS
    You can use libgsf/tests/test-msole1 in conjunction with the
    file gnumeric/plugins/biff-types.h to dump the BIFF content of
    files as binary blobs.  OOo has an xldumper program that goes
    further, but it is only enabled in debug builds.