[Info-vax] WEENDOZE question

[uetp]

On 06 Feb 2018, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG posted some
news:00B28313.CD3CBEE9 at SendSpamHere.ORG: 

> In article <fdugjiFi38kU1 at mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon
> <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> writes: 
>>On 02/06/2018 02:11 PM, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> That said, Excel got it wrong.  The spreadsheets I write out display
>>> properly with Numbers, LibreOffice, Gnumeric and even an app called
>>> Shheets on my Android tablet.  So, please tell me again. why should
>>> I use WEENDOZE?
>>> 
>>
>>Was your job to write out an Excel Spreadsheet or a
>>Numbers|LibreOffice|Gnumeric|Shheets Spreadsheet?
>>You originally said "an Excel Spreadsheet".  The
>>customer is a Windows customer so we can assume they
>>wanted an Excel Spreadsheet.  If the spreadsheet
>>you created doesn't work with Excel how is it that
>>Excel got it wrong?
> 
> http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c071691_ISO_IE
> C_29500-1_2016.zip#en 
> 
> Download it and read it.  Then, unzip an Excel .XLSX and look at its
> contents. 
> 
> I given the customer code to produce Postscript and PDF from VMS. 
> Since those are not Micro$oft formats, I suppose those should never
> ever be used either? It is the same war and struggle people have with
> web pages.  I've had to deal with that too over the years.  I'd verify
> pages with various web browsers to insure that pages displayed. M$IE
> was, invariably, the PITA.  Chrome seems to be the premier browser
> today.  According to your logic, I should be authoring web pages to
> appease M$IE 
> 
> Excel is one "browser" in this case, the spreadsheets are produced
> according with the aforementioned standards doc.  The intended
> recipients of the spread- sheets the customer emails may be using
> Excel or they may be using some other spreadsheet "browser". 
> Essentially, these spreadsheets are invoices.  I was informed that
> Excel didn't properly format the data when viewed.  Four other 
> spreadsheet tools "render" the data as intended and Excel was an odd
> man out. The standard is the best common denominator.     

Been around the block on VAXen a time or two myself.  

Open a command prompt:

C:\user\clown>wmic logicaldisk where drivetype=2 get deviceid, volumename, 
description.

That will show your removable USB drive and the letter assigned to it if 
the USB drive isn't borken, or access denied by security policy.

Open Explorer, not Internet Explorer, and access the USB drive.  You uh, 
double-click the drive letter identified earlier (If it's there.) and it 
will open.

Regarding Excel, (And as you were advised by another poster.) assuming 
you're using a modern version of it, the excel file is just a zip file 
with multiple files and folders in .XML format as demanded by the 
OpenDocument bunch.  Rename the extension to .zip, extract it, and examine 
the content.  Don't blame M$ for going along with the crowd on this one.  
The public demanded and M$ complied.  Thank the linux and Mac communities 
for this abortion.

I'm of course assuming that you can read .XML content.

If you're still having issues, go get notepad++ and examine your data.

--
PDP-11, RT-11, RSTS/E, Rdb/VMS, Access DB, Pathworks, uVMS to OpenVMS, 
VaxClusters, UCX, Citrix CCA, Novell 3x-6x, Windows 1.0 to Windows 10, 
VMWare, Couple flavors of Linux, OS/400 and more.  Running VAX/VMS 8.3 on 
Windows 10 x64 and OpenVMS Alpha on Windows 10 x64. VMSClusters on Windows 
do run and run well on Lenovo quads with 16GB PC-3 1800. Even works with 
an ES40 as the occasional guest. I've run every VAX from MVI to 9000 and 
Alphas to GS320.  Now doing networks, SANs and storage.