[Info-vax] WEENDOZE question

[Scott Dorsey]

oogla  <oogla at invalid.com> wrote:
>
>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.

Yes, this is much of the point of this whole thread.  The point of my
contribution was to talk about XLS and XLSX being very different formats
and that writing XLS files are much easier.

I will say that I _have_ had files written in OpenOffice as XLSX that could
not be read by Excel, though I have never had any file written by Excel that
could not be read by OpenOffice.

>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 is tested against other formats _as written by Excel_ but it is not tested
against formats written by other programs.  I have files written by LibreOffice
that can be read by Office 2013 but not by Office 2016, for instance.

>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.

XLS files are not really XML.  They look like XML, and you can read them with
XML-compliant applications, but that doesn't mean you can take them apart and
put them back together with xsltproc and expect them to work in Excel.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."