Writing to ms excel

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:36:39 +0200, Marin Brkic wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:37:16 +0200, "Marco Bizzarri"
> <marco.bizzarri at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Is it suitable for you to use a python program talking with a running
>>instance of openoffice? in that case, pyuno could help you.
> 
> Hello Marco, thanks for answering,
> 
> no, sorry. As much as I like OOffice, several other people will be using
> the program I'm working on, and I can't cound on them having the OOffice
> installed.

Of course you can. You could simply tell them that you need the 
programming interface to OpenOffice and that's the format you will be 
supplying the data. If they want your data, they will use what you tell 
them to use *if you give them no choice*.

If they want your data, most people will just accept that OpenOffice is a 
strange mysterious programming requirement, like all the other strange 
mysterious things programmers and sys admins install on their PC. The 
requirements are "a computer, Python and OpenOffice" instead of "a 
computer and Python".

If there are exceptions who know enough to insist that Excel can do 
everything OpenOffice can do (more or less), and they don't want to use 
OpenOffice, then don't argue. Just say that you're working on support for 
Excel, but it will take a few weeks, but as a temporary measure they can 
use OpenOffice until the code is ready. You will be *amazed* at how much 
people will accept change if you tell them it's only temporary.

You might even discover that by the time Excel support is ready, they 
will prefer OpenOffice.



> MS, as much as I hate to admit it, is the industry standard (or, at
> least that's the one we're stuck with at the present time ;-)

Only because we treat it as standard. You had no hesitation to write code 
that relies on people having Excel installed, and yet you didn't want to 
rely on an open source free software package that anyone with a fast 
Internet connection or a CD drive can install in just a couple of 
minutes. You don't even need to reboot the PC.



-- 
Steven