Excel Writer / News: Recent posts

Added support for basic formulas (numbers, strings, +, -, *, /, &, cell references); see ew_test.adb and excel_out_demo.adb for examples.

It may seem strange, but a CSV-to-Ada-source tool was missing here.
This is now fixed!

csv2ada {option} <data.csv
csv2ada {option} data.csv

Options:
-c : comma is the separator
-s : semicolon is the separator
-t : tab is the separator
-h : has a header row, converted to an enumerated type
-n : name columns

For example, the file:

    A,B,C
    1,2,3
    4,5,6
    7,8,9

is converted, without options, into:
~~~
(1 => (A, B, C),
2 => (1, 2, 3),
3 => (4, 5, 6),
4 => (7, 8, 9));
~~~... read more

The result, so far (click to enlarge image):

... read more

• Time output routine is compatible with Ada implementations' Duration type ranges shorter than GNAT's (e.g., ObjectAda64's).
• Portability improved; runs on ObjectAda64.

A cumbersome "feature" of MS Excel 2013 (and perhaps later versions) is that it blocks by default the editing of sheets in certain Excel formats, including those supported by Excel Writer.
However, it is easy to switch off this setting - which by the way is useless since there are no macros in those sheets.
Actually, you just need to follow the steps indicated by MS Excel 2013 as shown below.

Step 1:
... read more

Released as Zip archive: excel_writer_15.zip

Zoom factor for viewing / editing sheet was added.

International code pages were added (see Subversion repository under "Code") : Thai, Japanese Shift-JIS, Chinese Simplified GBK, Korean (Wansung), Chinese Traditional BIG5, Latin II (Central European), Cyrillic, Latin I, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, Baltic, Vietnamese, Korean (Johab).

Unfortunately, no Unicode so far: the introduction of Unicode in the Excel format coincided with a leap in complexity... So, you cannot mix, say, Greek and Korean in the same sheet.

New features since last note here:

• freeze panes
• cell comments
• vertical text alignment
• text orientation
• added Ada.Calendar.Time Put/Write and date built-in formats
• background colours
• wrap_text format option
• added Next and Next_Row
• Text_IO's New_Line(lines), Line, Col now available

New in 06:
- Added page layout
- Added custom number formats
- Added styles (% or ,)
- Fixed Write_column_width

New in 04 & 05:
- Some new built-in Excel numeric formats
- Usage of Excel_Out instead of Ada.Text_IO (and conversely) made a bit easier
- Should compile on any Ada 95+ compiler (a non-compliant detail was fixed)

- data stream can now by any; supplied: Excel_Out_File, Excel_Out_String
- added "Text_IO"-like Put, Put_Line, New_Line,...

Last incompatibility for those using the 01/02 versions:
to write a file, you need to use Excel_Out_File instead of Excel_Out_Stream (which is now abstract); to create it is now Create instead of Create_File, same for Close.

- row/column coordinates are 1-based (they have to!)
- added horizonal alignment and cell borders