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 !

"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
>
>
>
>

Another supporter.

Does anyone know if this has progressed?

-qooroo

"qooroo " <qooroo@gmail.com> wrote in message <h3hgel$64$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
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Another supporter.
>
> Does anyone know if this has progressed?
>
> -qooroo

I'm especially interested in an OpenOffice equivalent of xlswrite. Anyone know of anything which will do the job?

-qooroo

 
"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
 ---------------------------------
Another supporter.

"Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com> wrote in message <f75nis$lh3$1@fred.mathworks.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
>
>
Steve,

It is not clear from your message what exactly should we (supporters of this missing feature) should do in order to tell Mathwork to implement it.
If its sending an email, could you provide the email?
If its voting on some bug/issue report, could you provide the link?

Thanks,
Yuval.

"Yuval Aviel" <yuval.aviel.extra@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hod318$lqk$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> "Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com> wrote in message
> <f75nis$lh3$1@fred.mathworks.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
> Steve,
> It is not clear from your message what exactly should we (supporters of
> this missing feature) should do in order to tell Mathwork to implement it.
> If its sending an email, could you provide the email?
> If its voting on some bug/issue report, could you provide the link?

Send a description of why you feel the enhancement is important (and how you
would use it if it were implemented) to Technical Support using the "Product
Feedback" section on the Contact Us page linked at the top of
http://www.mathworks.com and ask them to add your feedback to the existing
request in our enhancement database. Giving your use case is particularly
important, as developers can use that information to help them design the
feature. [For example, if the developers decide to work on this feature,
determine that most people asking for this functionality are only interested
in reading Open Document spreadsheets, and realize that implementing support
for reading in different types of Open Documents takes significant effort,
they're likely going to focus on including spreadsheet support first when
implementing this enhancement.]

--
Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com
comp.soft-sys.matlab (CSSM) FAQ: http://matlabwiki.mathworks.com/MATLAB_FAQ

I don't mean to be flame-baiting, I just don't know much about Linux/Unix/MacOS.

Is it really so difficult to communicate between programs in Linux/Unix/MacOS? Interfacing Matlab and other programs is pretty trivial on Windows. I've used .NET, COM, ActiveX, and DDE. Is the difficulty on other platforms a shortcoming of Matlab or the other operating systems?

Again, I'm not trying to be a smart-a$$. I'm actually curious as to what the technical difficulties are.

Also, I've written code to read/write data from Mathcad XMCD files since they're just XML underneath. Wouldn't something similar for Open Documents be possible? I thought that was the whole point of using XML.

-Eric

Eric <not@givingemail.com> wrote:
> I don't mean to be flame-baiting, I just don't know much about
> Linux/Unix/MacOS.
>
> Is it really so difficult to communicate between programs in
> Linux/Unix/MacOS? Interfacing Matlab and other programs is pretty
> trivial on Windows. I've used .NET, COM, ActiveX, and DDE. Is the
> difficulty on other platforms a shortcoming of Matlab or the other
> operating systems?
>

In short, "yes" and "other operating systems".

Unlike the Widnows world with COM/ActiveX/dotNET, the Unix/unix/Linux
worlds never adopted a common portable object model and actually used it.
One has ancient stuff like CORBA ( predates COM ) and modern variants
like UNO ( what Open Office uses- kinda cloned from CORBA) but finding
any more than a handful of programs that support these is very hard.

A link to OO in Linux would be doable but would be special-cased
so unless there were lots of demand I don't see how Mathworks would
want to deal with it.

As MONO progresses, bringing dotNET to the Linux world this situation
might improve, since then a cross-platform supported portable
object capability will exist.

Of course then would have the issue of persuading Sun to move
to dotNET , but that's a whole different story.

Stan

"Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com> wrote in message <hod5gb$4nt$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
>
> "Yuval Aviel" <yuval.aviel.extra@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:hod318$lqk$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> > "Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com> wrote in message
> > <f75nis$lh3$1@fred.mathworks.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
> > Steve,
> > It is not clear from your message what exactly should we (supporters of
> > this missing feature) should do in order to tell Mathwork to implement it.
> > If its sending an email, could you provide the email?
> > If its voting on some bug/issue report, could you provide the link?
>
> Send a description of why you feel the enhancement is important (and how you
> would use it if it were implemented) to Technical Support using the "Product
> Feedback" section on the Contact Us page linked at the top of
> http://www.mathworks.com and ask them to add your feedback to the existing
> request in our enhancement database. Giving your use case is particularly
> important, as developers can use that information to help them design the
> feature. [For example, if the developers decide to work on this feature,
> determine that most people asking for this functionality are only interested
> in reading Open Document spreadsheets, and realize that implementing support
> for reading in different types of Open Documents takes significant effort,
> they're likely going to focus on including spreadsheet support first when
> implementing this enhancement.]
>
> --
> Steve Lord
> slord@mathworks.com
> comp.soft-sys.matlab (CSSM) FAQ: http://matlabwiki.mathworks.com/MATLAB_FAQ
>

Hi All,

Here is what I sent to Mathwork:
===========================================
Title: Read/Write OpenDocument Spreadsheet files (.ods)

Matlab can conveniently read and write Excel files.
Non-Windows operating systems, however, don't have Excel, hence this convenient feature is useless.
On the other hand, all operating systems have OpenOffice application. OpenOffice uses the OpenDocument ISO standard with file name extension .ods.
Many other applications read and write .ods files on various of operating systems and platforms.

Matlab, that runs on non-Windows operating systems, did not implement a read/write function from/to .ods files.
We ask this feature to be implemented.

For developers:
A starting point could be odftoolkit.org
or jopendocument.org: [http://www.jopendocument.org/start_spreadsheet_2.html]
===========================================

Feel free to send similar messages too.
You'll have to go to
http://www.mathworks.com/support/service_requests/contact_support.do

and fill in the details.

good luck.

>
> Hi All,
>
> Here is what I sent to Mathwork:
> ===========================================
> Title: Read/Write OpenDocument Spreadsheet files (.ods)
>
> Matlab can conveniently read and write Excel files.
> Non-Windows operating systems, however, don't have Excel, hence this convenient feature is useless.
> On the other hand, all operating systems have OpenOffice application. OpenOffice uses the OpenDocument ISO standard with file name extension .ods.
> Many other applications read and write .ods files on various of operating systems and platforms.
>
> Matlab, that runs on non-Windows operating systems, did not implement a read/write function from/to .ods files.
> We ask this feature to be implemented.
>
> For developers:
> A starting point could be odftoolkit.org
> or jopendocument.org: [http://www.jopendocument.org/start_spreadsheet_2.html]
> ===========================================
>
> Feel free to send similar messages too.
> You'll have to go to
> http://www.mathworks.com/support/service_requests/contact_support.do
>
> and fill in the details.
>
> good luck.

I took this advice and utilized the ODFDOM library (part of the odftoolkit project) to implement an xlsread wrapper .m function that will read .ods files on a non-pc platform. The function imports and utilizes classes from the odfdom.jar library.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28411

Currently it requires all of the arguments to xlsread (same arguments) and calls the regular xlsread for .xls files on a pc, but these can easily be modified. You can download and read documentation for the ODFDOM library at:

http://odftoolkit.org/projects/odfdom/pages/Home

"Paul " <elhuh@hotmail.com> wrote in message <i3pmb0$6c6$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
>
> I took this advice and utilized the ODFDOM library (part of the odftoolkit project) to implement an xlsread wrapper .m function that will read .ods files on a non-pc platform. The function imports and utilizes classes from the odfdom.jar library.
>
> http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28411
>
Thanks, Paul.

It looks great.

Yuval.

Paul wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Here is what I sent to Mathwork:
>> ===========================================
>> Title: Read/Write OpenDocument Spreadsheet files (.ods)
>>
>> Matlab can conveniently read and write Excel files.
>> Non-Windows operating systems, however, don't have Excel, hence this
>> convenient feature is useless.
>> On the other hand, all operating systems have OpenOffice application.
>> OpenOffice uses the OpenDocument ISO standard with file name extension
>> .ods.
>> Many other applications read and write .ods files on various of
>> operating systems and platforms.
>>
>> Matlab, that runs on non-Windows operating systems, did not implement
>> a read/write function from/to .ods files. We ask this feature to be
>> implemented.
>>
>> For developers: A starting point could be odftoolkit.org or
>> jopendocument.org:
>> [http://www.jopendocument.org/start_spreadsheet_2.html]
>> ===========================================
>>
>> Feel free to send similar messages too.
>> You'll have to go to
>> http://www.mathworks.com/support/service_requests/contact_support.do
>>
>> and fill in the details.
>>
>> good luck.
>
> I took this advice and utilized the ODFDOM library (part of the
> odftoolkit project) to implement an xlsread wrapper .m function that
> will read .ods files on a non-pc platform. The function imports and
> utilizes classes from the odfdom.jar library.
>
> http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28411
>
> Currently it requires all of the arguments to xlsread (same arguments)
> and calls the regular xlsread for .xls files on a pc, but these can
> easily be modified. You can download and read documentation for the
> ODFDOM library at:
>
> http://odftoolkit.org/projects/odfdom/pages/Home

What odfdom version did you use?

FYI, almost a year ago I've implemented ods R/w capacity for octave (and
for that matter, xls R/W support based on java, i.e. multi-platform).
There are plans to port both to ML soon (should be easy).
I found (and still find) both the odfdom & jopendocument libraries
lacking quite a bit compared to e.g., Apache POI (Excel).

odfdom version 0.7.5, while based on the low-level table API, is still
the most reliable IMO; later versions (0.8+) are riddled with bugs
especially when writing sheets. These later versions are fairly
memory-hungry too (one definitely needs to increase the java VM memory
settings when spreadsheets-to-be-processed get bigger).

jopendocument 1.2b3 lacks a few useful methods and often shows a nasty
bug when creating sheets - but it is much faster than odfdom.

Philip