Status of Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer: Very bad

Hello! I just wanted to give a feedback on Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer. We have now released a new version of Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer which makes it at least usable for most simple tasks with BIFF8. However when trying to fix a couple more bugs I realized the following facts: Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer is hopelessly outdated. At the time it was created very little was known about the Excel format and so the whole structure of the package does reflect that. Fixing the most simple things, like formulas etc. or this one: http://pear.php.net/bugs/bug.php?id=2146 would need a complete rewrite of the internal procedures since the current package does not really know how an Excel file is structured. Something I would not be able to do (because it would cost _alot_ of time) and considering the fact that there is a pretty decent PHP Excel package out there (PHPExcel), it is very unlikely that anyone will do it. When I took over the package I was hoping that only applying patches by the users and a couple intensive debugs would fix the problems - only after alot of insight into the package I found out the things above. Under these circumstances I would recommend to put this package out of its misery and mark it as deprecated. If you have any questions or comments please let me know. Best regards Carsten Schmitz