Re: Google Summer of Code

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson <helgith@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 7:32 PM, Chuck Burgess <demon.gene@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Would a complete PHP5 rewrite of Excel Writer be a worthy goal, if we > > have > > the userbase to support calling it an important package? > > > If you find someone that understands the format, sure, actually MS is > giving people access to some docs about the old excel, word and similar > formats (can't find the link atm, sorry) so it's perhaps possible. > > If someone finds the link, please post it. > To answer my own question: MS has been providing the binary specifications on request via http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840817/en-us per the open specification promise [1] but since Feb 2008 they have had it freely available for people [2] More info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Open_Specification_Promise 2) http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/E/0BE8BDD7-E5E8-422A-ABFD-4342ED7AD886/Excel97-2007BinaryFileFormat(xls)Specification.xps