Re: Reading HTML with Excel (was: SQL2JXL)

On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Seems like the topic of generating Excel files from
IBM i applications would be appropriate for this list.
One might use Excel to generate an HTML Template,
use RPG to fill in the blanks and generate an IFS stream file.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were continuing the thread. I thought you
were semi-hijacking it because the question you led with was "can I do
this with Excel?", which I read as PC-centric, and for whatever
reason, I just completely failed to get that you were proposing
generating the HTML on the i.

The approach of filling in an HTML template is not hugely different
from filling in an XML template, which was already mentioned a few
times in this thread. I don't know the relative merits of the formats
in relation to Excel's use of them. For example, one might have nicer
ways to specify numeric formatting than the other. If one is nicer,
Excelwise, I would expect it's XML, which is another reason it didn't
occur to me to generate HTML. But I don't use either format
personally, so I don't know. It could be that HTML is better than
XML. (Once I discovered the ability to easily read and write .xls and
.xlsx, I've had little motivation to put serious research into other
formats. Of course, if it ever stops being Fast Enough, I may revisit
it. But by then, Scott will probably have released his RPG-only .xlsx
tools, and that will provide ample speed boost.)

John