[Info-vax] WEENDOZE question

[oogla]

In article <p5g4e2$1qnr$1 at gioia.aioe.org>
=?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
> On 2/7/2018 6:48 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> > =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> >> On 2/7/2018 11:46 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >>>    <VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
> >>>>> 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_IEC_29500-1_2016.zip#en
> >>>>
> >>>> Download it and read it.  Then, unzip an Excel .XLSX and look at its contents.
> >>>
> >>> The problem is that the .XLSX format is very very touchy.  It looks like
> >>> an XML file inside, but really it isn't.
> >>
> >> Are you saying that the XML does is not well formed XML or that it does
> >> not validate against the schemas??
> >
> > I am saying that it matters what order the XML fields are in, for instance.
> > _Reading_ an XLSX file is easy because it is good XML.  The thing is, just
> > because you write a good XML file doesn't mean Excel will read it.
>
> Is that because:
> A) the XSL defines an order of elements and they were written in wrong
>     order?
> B) the XSL specify that elements can be in any order but Excel will only
>     read them in a certain order
> ?
>
> >>>                                            You can write code to generate it
> >>> to the standard but that doesn't mean Excel will read it.  And if Excel does,
> >>> it might not in the next release.
> >>
> >> I would think using a well tested library to generate should make it
> >> likely to work.
> >>
> >> LO (and OOo) seems to read and write it OK.
> >
> > They do, for the current version of Excel, but when the next version comes
> > out it will turn out to be touchy in other different ways.
>
> That sounds rather weird.
>
> MSO version N read and write OOXML version X
> MSO version N+1 read and write OOXML version X+1
> LO version Y read and write OOXML version X
> LO version Y+1 read and write OOXML version X+1
>
> Obviously LO version Y may not be able to read files written by MSO
> version X+1.
>
> But how can MSO version X+1 not read files written by LO version Y?
>
> If it can't then it would have problems reading files written by
> MSO version X, which would have been noticed by a few hundred million
> users.
>
> Arne

I've never seen a problem with Excel opening/reading the files 
it creates, or those created by OpenOffice.  I've seen some 
horrible attempts from apps that supposedly write output in 
Excel format, but it's easier to use text and import it to be 
massaged into what you want.

Excel doesn't "change" how it reads or writes those files from 
version to version.  It may add some new formats, but it's 
always capable of reading older workbooks.

It may stop you from running macros that were written in older 
times, but that's exactly what the user community has asked for 
in the name of security.

Never had a problem importing any data into it either unless it 
was garbage when it arrived.  Sometimes that is the case.

Another thing.  Some files named .XML are not truly in the sense 
XML.  They're XML with DTD / XSD, and any modern app trying to 
work with these legacy DTD hybrid abortions resulting from 
mixing the two, gets blamed for the crappy end result.