Thread Subject: Does anyone else wish Matlab could handle Open Documents?

I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab. It works great on Linux and MacOS but can only read and write Excel spreadsheets, and that rarely works properly without ActiveX.

Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open Document Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off their butts and get with the times.

Let me know what you guys think.

Darren

While not exactly Open Docs, you can use OfficeDoc (available on the File Exchange) to read, write & format other types of Microsoft Office documents: Word (DOC) and PowerPoint (PPT), in addition to Excel (XLS). It requires ActiveX, though.

If there's enough public demand I guess I could expand it to Open Office.

Yair Altman
http://www.ymasoftware.com

"Darren " <darrenb@NOSPAM.udel.edu> wrote in message
news:f75gcn$6h$1@fred.mathworks.com...
>I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab. It works great on
>Linux and MacOS but can only read and write Excel spreadsheets, and that
>rarely works properly without ActiveX.
>
> Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open Document
> Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off their butts and get with
> the times.
>
> Let me know what you guys think.
>
> Darren

I've noted your interest in this in our enhancement database. In the
future, though, if you want to request an enhancement you should also send a
message to technical support in addition to posting to CSSM. The support
group specifically tracks how many people ask for each enhancement that is
requested by a user that contacts support and shares that information with
development. In addition, it may be that the enhancement you request is
already in the product, and in that case support can tell you that and tell
you how to access your requested functionality.

--
Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com

I would find it very helpful.

Ondrej

Another vote for ODF support

I would find it very helpful too.
Especially when using the Matlab-Report Generator.

Günter

It would be very helpful to have support for open document
formats...+1

I'll be a happy user too...

Thanks in advance,
Ken

"Darren " <darrenb@NOSPAM.udel.edu> wrote in message
<f75gcn$6h$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab.
It works great on Linux and MacOS but can only read and
write Excel spreadsheets, and that rarely works properly
without ActiveX.
>
> Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open
Document Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off
their butts and get with the times.
>
> Let me know what you guys think.
>
> Darren
>
Hey Darren,

On that excel note, you can just write tab-delimited data
in a plain text file and give it the extention .xls. Works
great ;)

"Diederick Niehorster" <none@none.com> wrote in message
news:fg9mme$so6$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> "Darren " <darrenb@NOSPAM.udel.edu> wrote in message
> <f75gcn$6h$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
>> I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab.
> It works great on Linux and MacOS but can only read and
> write Excel spreadsheets, and that rarely works properly
> without ActiveX.
>>
>> Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open
> Document Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off
> their butts and get with the times.
>>
>> Let me know what you guys think.
>>
>> Darren
>>
> Hey Darren,
>
> On that excel note, you can just write tab-delimited data
> in a plain text file and give it the extention .xls. Works
> great ;)

If you move to writing tab-delimited data, there's no reason to manipulate
the extension, either.

You can use DLMREAD or IMPORTDATA to read the file easily, or TEXTSCAN or
TEXTREAD to have finer control over the process.
--
Bob Gilmore, The MathWorks, Inc.

"Darren " <darrenb@NOSPAM.udel.edu> wrote in message
<f75gcn$6h$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab. It
works great on Linux and MacOS but can only read and write
Excel spreadsheets, and that rarely works properly without
ActiveX.
>
> Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open
Document Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off
their butts and get with the times.
>
> Let me know what you guys think.
>
> Darren
>
>
>
>
Darren:

I wholeheartedly agree. My company paid mega bucks for
software from MathSoft. Why shouldn't we have software
that, if not groundbreaking, is at least with the times?

Scott

Thanks for the support guys!

Some people have suggested using delimited files as a
replacement for Excel. There is no way a delimited file can
even be remotely considered a suitable replacement. My
problem is that I don't merely want to write data to a
spreadsheet once and be done with it. I want to
consistently manipulate the data in a spreadsheet and have
the spreadsheet program (preferable Calc) perform all the
pre-set calculations when Matlab is done with the file.
This works well with Excel (only in Windows, of course).
This would be a great thing to implement in Matlab, and
especially easy since OpenDocument is just that, open. If I
was half a programmer, I would have done this already. Any
one up to the challenge?

"Darren " <darrenb@NOSPAM.udel.edu> wrote in message
<f75gcn$6h$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> I personally see this as a severe hindrance to Matlab. It
works great on Linux and MacOS but can only read and write
Excel spreadsheets, and that rarely works properly without
ActiveX.
>
> Has anyone developed code to handle (read and write) Open
Document Spreadsheets? If not, Mathworks needs to get off
their butts and get with the times.
>
> Let me know what you guys think.
>
> Darren

Hi Darren,

I'm interested in developing the same functionality as you
proposed. It could be a great benefit for everybody to be
able to load OpenDocument spreadsheet format from Matlab.

I work under Linux "24/7" and really wish to use
OpenOffice.org calc ".ods" files in Matlab for my work.

My first goal would be to develop a M-file (or a Mex
library) that can read the first sheet of an ods file. This
sheet would, in a first approach, contain only string and
numerical values (no formulas).

For the moment, the way I use xls file in my work just looks
like what can be achieved using a data base (reading &
querying the data) + the benefits of the Excel GUI that
allow quick data changes.
For this reason I'm not sure to invest many time developing
such a code, while, for example, mySQL clients exists for
Matlab (and it can be a great solution for me).
I'm just looking for co-developers who would like to develop
a simple ods file reading tool with me !

Just answer and we'll see !