Rob Weir posted on his blog a couple of days ago an Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability .  I think it’s great that he has brought up spreadsheet interoperability, and specifically the issue of formulas, which seems to be the main thrust of his post.  I mentioned on the day of our SP2 release last week that “I’ll be doing some blog posts that get down into more of the technical details, to help explain some of the engineering decisions that we made in our implementation,” and Rob’s post is a good starting point for that conversation.

See the article here:
ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability

PHPPowerPoint 0.1.0 was released last week, as an open-source PHP API for generating PPTX files, much like the PHPExcel API for XLSX files.  Maarten Balliauw has a blog post with more information, download links, and sample code. A new post at OpenXMLDeveloper.org covers the Simple OOXML Library , a set of classes that sit on top of the Open XML SDK to help developers create word-processing documents and spreadsheets quickly with minimal programming required.  The abstractions of this library make it possible to be immediately productive with Open XML even if you haven’t studied the details of the spec yet

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Links for 05/04/2009

Hello All, Just released xprocxq, which is an experimental bootstrap implementation of W3C XProc Draft Specification, written in xquery of all things. xprocxq project information and download http://code.google.com/p/xprocxq/ xprocxq runs within eXist XML Database but the original prototype was developed using SAXON -SA. I am planning to support more XQuery processors in the future but will focus on making xprocxq as compliant as possible for eXist XML Database.

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[ANN] xprocxq v0.6.74 BETA an XProc processor written
in XQuery

I’m happy to announce the 10.1.3.4.1 release of BI Publisher. This release rolls up bug fixes and enhancements since 10.1.3.4.0 to include the following: Support for Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3 Extended Support for Single Sign-On Providers Automatic Refresh of LDAP Cache Support for Siebel CRM Security Support for Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for Burst Reports Data Model Enhancements Web Service Data Set Type Enhancement: Specify Path to Data in SOAP Response SQL Query Data Set New Property: Use Default Schema Only Support for JNDI for Scheduler Connections Support for Expressions to Calculate Date Parameters RTF Template Enhancements Get List of BI Publisher Configuration Settings Enable Debug Mode for an RTF Template Number to Word Conversion in Report Output Remove Logos and Links from the BI Publisher Header Disable Access to Guest Page Updates to the BI Publisher Web Services For more details on this release please see: BI Publisher New Features Guide Release Notes Certification Information Note: something is wrong with the doc pages at the time of posting.

Originally posted here:
BI Publisher 10.1.3.4.1 Enhancements

I just updated Papervision3D to allow the CameraObject3D#unproject method to work when CameraObject3D#useProjectionMatrix = true. Papervision3D has two methods of ‘projecting’ vectors onto the screen: useProjectionMatrix = false, this is the default ‘fast’ method useProjectionMatrix = true, this is the method where projection is done by a matrix Note that Papervision3D switches to method #2 in ‘ortho mode’. So what is the difference exactly between these two kinds of projection?

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Unproject with useProjectionMatrix = true

Catching up on links to blog posts I’ve found interesting this month … I was on vacation the first week of April, and missed out on the announcement of the release of the Open XML SDK Version 2 April CTP.  Zeyad Rajabi has details of the SDK version 2 over on Brian Jones’s blog, including a great example of the validation technology that is being built into the SDK.  Zeyad also has a new post this week on how to remove comments from Excel and PowerPoint files . Stephen Peront , who will be in London at the DII workshop on May 18, has posted an example of how to use the new External File Converter API in Office 2007 SP2 .  This API gives developers the ability to add their own custom formats to Office’s list of supported formats – the list that appears in the dropdowns on the File/Open and Save/As dialogs.

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Miscellaneous Links, 04/22/2009

The INCITS Executive Board has approved the adoption of ISO/IEC IS29500 (Office Open XML) as an American National Standard this week (on April 15), and the document will be published soon by ANSI.  This action taken by INCITS is a relatively routine occurence, as the US typically adopts ISO/IEC standards as national standards.  As an INCITS V1 member, I was very excited to see this news.  It’s a positive step in the validation and global adoption of IS29500.

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IS29500 is an American National Standard

I’m currently using Excel XP (2003) and having been learning some tricks to get data out of HTML tables into an Excel document.  I stumbled onto a cool feature last night… Go to the Data menu > Import External Data > New Web Query.  What you get is effectively a web browser that lets you enter a web page or even login and navigate to a page of your choice.  The browser places little icons next to the tables in the web page, allowing you to copy that data across to your Excel spreadsheet.  This option also comes up when you have justed tried to paste table data and get the little popup to do with formatting. Also, if you’re interested, I see that in Firefox you can CTRL-Click on individual table cells and copy out the data from just those cells.  I’m sure you’ve found like me that it can be tricky copying just the column or row of data you need from a web page, and this might help you one day

Original post:
Copying HTML Table Data into Excel

It is a last minute announcement but consider making it to the first OW2 Annual Conference in Paris over the next two days: Open Source for the Computing Infrastructure MAKE A DATE TO ATTEND THE FIRST OW2 ANNUAL CONFERENCE Two days at no cost to you to discover the enterprise software that will set you free and boost your efficiency: come and take part in the first OW2 Annual Conference, April 1-2, in Paris, held during the Solutions Linux trade show. Optimize your time: attending the first OW2 Annual Conference will also offer you the opportunity to visit the Solution Linux trade show, discover the latest developments in the OW2’s leading projects and get to talk with the developers themselves

Link:
OW2 Annual Conference, April 1-2, 2009.

We had three days of WG4 face-to-face meetings in Prague last week, followed by the SC34 plenary on Friday at the same location.  As Jesper has noted, it was a tough week and we made an enormous amount of progress. For those who might not know, WG4 is the SC34 working group responsible for the maintenance of the Open XML spec, ISO/IEC 29500.  WG4 had its first meeting in Okinawa in January, and this time around in Prague we had more participants (31 the first day, as opposed to 22 in Okinawa) and worked through many more defect reports.  I’ve not seen project editor Rex Jaeschke’s official report yet, but we worked through over 30 defect reports ranging from simple editorial corrections to far-reaching changes such as the Swiss proposal to change the namespaces to distinguish them from ECMA-376 1st Edition.

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WG4 meetings and SC 34 plenary, Prague