Re: [Planner Dev] [Fwd: RE: MPP file format]

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Tue, 2004-05-11 at 20:25 -0400, Kurt Maute wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I ran across this project today - called mpxj.  Its a java library
> designed to interpret M$P files in various formats including mpx, mpp,
> and mspdi xml files, so I contacted the developer, Jon Iles (message
> below), and it looks to me like we could leverage his work to enable
> import/export functionality in Planner.
> 
> I like the sound of his option #2 - building mpxj with gcj rather than
> re-implementing it in C++, but I'm not nearly as in touch with the
> technical details to be sure...

I think a lot of the hard work for option #1 (using his algorithms,
essentially) is possibly already taken care of in libgsf, which is used
by gnumeric and a few other projects to handle reading files in these
sort of formats.

The second option (building the Java stuff in a way that it can be
linked) is only really useful if we can build some C code that be
checked into CVS (or at least distributed with the tarball). Otherwise
we are adding an enormous overhead to the build requirements. I start to
bleed from the ears every time I need to get any kind of vaguely complex
Java pile of wax working, especially with gcj. And I don't think I am at
the bottom of the ability tree when it comes to building things.

All that being said. MS Project import and export for the various
versions is a really big benefit. Currently we sort of kind of do the
MPX stuff, but I have not been overwhelmed with its usefulness (many
bumps on the road).

Cheers,
Malcolm