Re: Making PHPExcel available via a pear channel?

Hallo! My feelings are that SEW should be deprecated. Unfortunately PEAR doesn't seem to know a deprecation procedure (at least I could not find any documentation about it). I think the only way to save this package would be to rip off the necessary core parts from PHPExcel. The problem with PHPExcel that I see are that its requirements are pretty high - like * PHP version 5.2.0 or higher * PHP extension php_zip enabled *) * PHP extension php_xml enabled * PHP extension php_gd2 enabled (if not compiled in) At least for the LimeSurvey project this is the reason we are not using PHPExcel since LimeSurvey itself runs from any PHP 5.x version. I think however that the requirements could be lowered by adjusting the necessary code parts. However on my request ot the PHPExcel team about this they are not interested to change it due to performance reasons (which might be true for the ODF part of PHPExcel) - I think however that having low requirments would broaden the PHPExcel userbase alot. I am also a little worried about Maarten saying "We can setup a new PEAR package _somewhere_ that contains PHPExcel.", too. There seems to be no interest to really join the PEAR core - but I may be too paranoid on this. To sum it up: The PHPExcel team seems interested, but not too much - and preferably not if there is any additional work involved - I think they are passing a good chance here but that is for them to decide. Best regards from Hamburg/Germany Carsten Schmitz LimeSurvey Project Leader carsten.schmitz@limesurvey.org http://www.limesurvey.org Am 02.04.2010 12:53, schrieb Daniel O'Connor:

Hey Maarten, You are no doubt aware of PEAR's Spreadsheet Excel Writer package; and probably know better than most of us that it is... somewhat old and creaky. I notice you are already producing PEAR installable releases of PHPExcel, and its actually pretty simple these days to get a simple channel up and running. IE: http://www.pirum-project.org/ or http://pearfarm.org/ are the two newest entrants into the market, and there's a few others. What would be the chances of you or your project taking a look at doing it? If you are already doing that and I've just not spotted it - great! The reason I ask is that our poor old package is responsible for a huge amount of bug reports and other things we don't really have the manpower to fix. Our options are 1) throw loads of manpower behind http://pear.php.net/package/OpenDocument and convert the world to open standards 2) live with the current package as it is and forever receive bug reports about it 3) deprecate the package in favour of PHPExcel being available via a pear channel I really would like to do #3; because I think it's the most practical thing going forward. Franck & Carsten - what would your feelings be on this? -Daniel