Writing formulas to excel spreadsheet

ruby-talk
21

Chad Perrin wrote in post #1000266:

but it is *not* vital to explain to some
Microsoft obsessed shitbird why you are using Ruby to interact with an
XLS file rather than doing it "by hand" in Excel.

The trouble with you Chad is you always manage to miss the point.

You too.

No-one on this thread has mentioned doing it by hand. The issue was
whether or not to use Windows OLE rather than a Linux environment, given
that the end-product is for Windows users, and that it is does what Will
wants - unlike his Linux solution.

Not necessarily, the spreadsheets can be used on a variety of systems
all of which can read them.
Now I would choose a different file format but if part of the target
users want to open the files in Excel or another spreadsheet this
might be the most suitable format for the purpose.
CSV or HTML works too but importing into a spreadsheet is somewhat problematic.

I'm not Microsoft obsessed. The simple fact is it is the Linga Franca of
the computing world. Linux is only on a tiny minority of desktops. So

Maybe where you work. I would guesstimate Windows being on about half
of computers in the world.
That's something that should be taken into consideration but not taken
for granted.

it's natural to question why someone would choose to go down a such a
route when Windows is what most other people would be using.

Will has said his colleagues just happen to be avid Linux fans so that's
fair enough.
That answers the question.

I did not see anything about them being avid Linux fans. If you did
not notice there are things like Windows without MS Office installed,
OS X, even PDAs and tablets that can run Ruby but not MS Office OLE.

I know on this channel I will get the anti-Microsoft lobby. Fortunately
I don't get it at work. Professional programmers grudgingly accept that
.NET has bugs and the usual MS baggage but probably is a better bet than
say Java for mainstream e-business. Sadly people rarely have an opinion
on Ruby.

I don't know what you mean by e-business. If you mean serving web
pages then I would rather rely on Java then .NET for the purpose.

Regards

Michal

···

On 23 May 2011 23:38, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:

22

Well, except that plenty of professional programmers come to the exact
opposite conclusion wrt the relative desirability of .NET and Java for
mainstream e-business.

···

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:

I know on this channel I will get the anti-Microsoft lobby. Fortunately
I don't get it at work. Professional programmers grudgingly accept that
.NET has bugs and the usual MS baggage but probably is a better bet than
say Java for mainstream e-business.

23

Damjan Rems wrote in post #1000470:

Just my 5 cents. What do you need formulas for. Is your data going to be
changed by hand in the future?

If not, why not calculate it by your program.

by
TheR

I thought about doing it this way, but the spreadsheet will have
calculations based on previous calculations, based on previous
calculations, and so on, so it's good to have the formulas in there, in
part so that whoever is viewing the formulas can follow the process of
how something is derived (without too much effort), and so that the
viewer can verify that nothing went wrong anywhere in the process of
deriving the final values. Basically, the formulas are good for
transparency, in this case.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

24

Chad Perrin wrote in post #1000266:
> but it is *not* vital to explain to some
> Microsoft obsessed shitbird why you are using Ruby to interact with an
> XLS file rather than doing it "by hand" in Excel.

The trouble with you Chad is you always manage to miss the point.

That's funny, considering you have, apparently, completely missed the
point of the original query in favor of criticizing someone's need for a
solution to the problem of programmatically generating spreadsheet
formulae in Ruby rather than just using Excel.

No-one on this thread has mentioned doing it by hand. The issue was
whether or not to use Windows OLE rather than a Linux environment, given
that the end-product is for Windows users, and that it is does what Will
wants - unlike his Linux solution.

I'm not sure you're reading all that closely:

Daniel Berger wrote in post #999984:

Will

I'm still fascinated why you are doing sophisticated things with
Excel (not Open Office) but steadfastly refuse to load it on
your computer. Windows and Excel can be purchased for the price
of a monitor. You gain ownership of software that costs hundreds
and hundreds of millions to develop.

Why fanny around with some Micky Mouse spreadsheet gem when you
can have the Full Monty?

Even if he had it installed locally, I'm guessing that he would want
to generate the document in code since generating it by hand would be
cumbersome. In addition, the spreadsheet gem works on any platform
(last I checked).

Of course, I didn't read back too far in the thread -- because I didn't
keep an archive of the entire thread before that point. It's possible I
lost some reference to a subject that made it clear Daniel's discussion
of "generating it by hand" was in error, but I think it's at least as
possible you're just full of it, given your attitude.

I'm not Microsoft obsessed. The simple fact is it is the Linga Franca
of the computing world. Linux is only on a tiny minority of desktops.
So it's natural to question why someone would choose to go down a such
a route when Windows is what most other people would be using.

It's not "natural" to criticize someone for writing software that allows
people to accomplish things on their OSes of choice. Try to avoid
trolling by criticizing people's platform choices in circumstances like
this, and you won't have people pointing out that you sound like you're
obsessed with microsoft.

Will has said his colleagues just happen to be avid Linux fans so
that's fair enough. That answers the question.

You didn't have a question. You had non-constructive criticism. Try
reading what you type after you're done typing it before sending it,
unless your actual goal is to be an abrasive asshole. The latter seems
likely, given the fact that I frankly don't even know who you are, but
you clearly chose to treat me like some kind of mortal enemy.

I know on this channel I will get the anti-Microsoft lobby. Fortunately
I don't get it at work.

If you didn't come off as anti-anything-but-Microsoft with some of your
responses, you probably wouldn't get "anti-Microsoft" responses. Of
course, my response was not "anti-Microsoft": it simply treated your
response as unreasonably demanding that people buy software they don't
want.

Professional programmers grudgingly accept that .NET has bugs and the
usual MS baggage but probably is a better bet than say Java for
mainstream e-business. Sadly people rarely have an opinion on Ruby.

I've fed the troll enough already. I'll just stop there.

···

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 06:38:19AM +0900, Mike Stephens wrote:

On May 20, 3:36pm, Mike Stephens <rub...@recitel.net> wrote:

--
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]

25

Michal Suchanek wrote in post #1000501:

I would guesstimate Windows being on about half
of computers in the world.
even PDAs and tablets that can run Ruby but not MS Office OLE.

According to this

90% of computers run Windows, so normally you'd stand a fair chance of
your program working if you used OLE.

I don't know what you mean by e-business. If you mean serving web
pages then I would rather rely on Java then .NET for the purpose.

I'm not saying I'm right or that MS is better. I'm just saying there are
a lot of people in my world (eg web apps for customers to service
120,000 loans; websites to sell international health insurance etc) and
they just don't have this slightly puerile anti-microsoft attitude, so
I'm confused why a few people on here cannot help themselves from making
snide remarks whenever MS is mentioned.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

26

I'm not saying I'm right or that MS is better. I'm just saying there
are a lot of people in my world (eg web apps for customers to service
120,000 loans; websites to sell international health insurance etc)
and they just don't have this slightly puerile anti-microsoft
attitude, so I'm confused why a few people on here cannot help
themselves from making snide remarks whenever MS is mentioned.

Before my unbelieving eyes, you have transformed a discussion on using
ruby into an operating system flame war. Now that's magic!

Do you do parties?

27

x11 is not an operating system. FreeBSD is not even on that list. If
your gonna link analysis and statistic web at least link one that has
been around since before the bubble.

As for referring to your peers as childish within your remark about M$
hate. Seriously if you don't know what the problem is at this point
you really should reevaluate some of this cognitive dissonance so you
wont be spewing bullshit like over 90% computer in the whole world run
x,y,z OS.

···

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:

Michal Suchanek wrote in post #1000501:

I would guesstimate Windows being on about half
of computers in the world.
even PDAs and tablets that can run Ruby but not MS Office OLE.

According to this
Operating system market share

90% of computers run Windows, so normally you'd stand a fair chance of
your program working if you used OLE.

I don't know what you mean by e-business. If you mean serving web
pages then I would rather rely on Java then .NET for the purpose.

I'm not saying I'm right or that MS is better. I'm just saying there are
a lot of people in my world (eg web apps for customers to service
120,000 loans; websites to sell international health insurance etc) and
they just don't have this slightly puerile anti-microsoft attitude, so
I'm confused why a few people on here cannot help themselves from making
snide remarks whenever MS is mentioned.

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

28

He's probably too busy doing bridges.

···

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 03:22:41AM +0900, Johnny Morrice wrote:

> I'm not saying I'm right or that MS is better. I'm just saying there
> are a lot of people in my world (eg web apps for customers to service
> 120,000 loans; websites to sell international health insurance etc)
> and they just don't have this slightly puerile anti-microsoft
> attitude, so I'm confused why a few people on here cannot help
> themselves from making snide remarks whenever MS is mentioned.

Before my unbelieving eyes, you have transformed a discussion on using
ruby into an operating system flame war. Now that's magic!

Do you do parties?

--
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]