Re: Wondering about Excel 11 "XML import"

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 07:11:02AM -0500, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>    - how smart it is? I.e. how does it work in practice, doing that
>      structure -> array remapping may have tons of heuristics to make
>      it behave in a useful fashion
That seems likely.  The variation in xml formats is quite large.
Have a look at the difference between the table style with implicit
addressing in OO vs the matrix form with explicit addressing in
gnumeric.   Then contrast both with the xhtml importer.  I don't
know much about all the other bits of xml, but this seems unlikely
to be simple.

>    - shouldn't something similar be added into Gnumeric (if not already)?
>      Having XML as a default format is one thing but importing unconstrained
>      XML can potentially be really useful considering XML is getting
>      ubiquitous when people want to exchange data.
unconstrained ?  You're better qualified to judge the feasibility of
that.  However, remember that spreadsheets have a huge amount of
markup.  The formulas are written in a non-xml language and refer to
things all over the document.  Styles are broken into components and
then overlayed onto large areas.  This is not simple.  We could
start work on something like this in a plugin, but not in this
release cycle.  1.2 is already going to be late.  I am trying not to
work on any unplanned features before it is released.

>   I'm left wondering, maybe people here have first hand experience with
> Excel 11, or have viewpoints on this,
I have not seen anyone use their older xml format, never mind the
new one.  It would be nice to get a copy of XP at some point and
play with it.