Re: BIFF loader source

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 04:13:40PM +0000, Nick Lamb wrote:
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~njl98r/code/
Lovely I'll have a look in the next few days.
 
> It would be nice if someone found time to put this into CVS, I don't know
> how Jody feels about adding new plug-ins to the 1.0.x tree, but I do hope
> this can at least go into the prospective 1.1 or 2.0 when that happens.
I'll move it into the 1.1 tree when it opens.  We're moving towards
a libgnumeric with associated header files.  That will eventually
make distributing 3rd-party plugins easier.

> 1. Users no longer need to know if their XL files are the "right" format,
> especially important for dusty but useful sheets found on the web.
This is why it can not go into the 1.0 tree, sorry.
 
> 2. Version-sensitive BIFF parser handles earlier, shorter, versions of
> many record types (better than the "real" Excel plugin IMHO)
The existing code could certainly be tidier about this, but it has
never seemed worth the effort.  The chart importer is considerably
cleaner.

> 0. Mixed style. This code is even less tidy than that in the Excel code.
We'll want to polish it up over time.
 
> 1. Verbose debug, needs trimming (more #ifdefs ?) if this code gets used
Have a look at the d() macro.  It tends to make things clearer.
 
> 2. No style code. No charts. No embedded video. Just the numbers, the
> structure and the formulae that (hopefully) are the vital bits.
Seems like a good start.  Styles should not be too tough.
 
> 3. Various obtuse things will not work or set your PC on fire, this has
> been tested on more Excel 4.0 (or earlier) files than most people will
> ever see, and it doesn't crash but...
Can we get some of these files to add to the test suite ?

thanks