Description

This is a port of John McNamara's Perl module "Spreadsheet::WriteExcel". It
allows you to generate Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheets (in 
Excel 95 format) on *any* platform. These spreadsheets are viewable
with most other popular spreadsheet programs, including Gnumeric.

Installation

Standard Installation

ruby test/ts_all.rb (optional)
ruby install.rb

Gem Installation

ruby test/ts_all.rb (optional)
ruby spreadsheet-excel.gemspec
gem install spreadsheet-excel-x.y.z.gem # where 'x.y.z' is the version

or directly via RubyForge:
gem install spreadsheet-excel

Synopsis

require "spreadsheet/excel"
include Spreadsheet

workbook = Excel.new("test.xls")

format = Format.new
format.color = "green"
format.bold  = true

worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet
worksheet.write(0, 0, "Hello", format)
worksheet.write(1, 1, ["Matz","Larry","Guido"])

workbook.close

What it doesn’t do

There is no support for formulas (yet).
There is no support for worksheets greater than 7 MB.
You cannot read/parse an existing spreadsheet with this package.

Regarding formula support

Simple formulas are easy enough, but to handle complex formulas in a
reasonable fashion requires a parser.  John used "Parse::RecDescent" in his
own code to parse formulas and I will need something similar to do so as
well. Since I'm not too good at parsing, and I don't personally have the
need for formula support, I'm more or less waiting for a patch.

Regarding the 7MB limit

Getting past the 7 MB limit requires an interface to the MS structured
storage format.  This doesn't exist (yet) in Ruby.  For more on structured
storage documents, download this: http://www.i3a.org/pdf/wg1n1017.pdf
(there's a structured storage section).  That, and there is information
about structured storage on the MSDN website at http://microsoft.msdn.com

More information

See the documentation in the 'doc' directory for more details.

Known Bugs

None that I'm aware of.  If you find any, please log them on the project
page at http://rubyspreadsheet.sf.net.

License

Ruby's

(C) 2005, Daniel J. Berger
All Rights Reserved

Author

Daniel J. Berger
djberg96 at gmail dot com
IRC nickname: imperator/mok/rubyhacker1 (freenode)

Maintainer 

Hannes Wyss
hannes.wyss@gmail.com