I used FireFox to download the XLWT tar file (right click, save as)
then opened it with WinZip, extracted it to a folder on my PC then
copied the complete folder contents to the IFS via OpsNav.
I don't use OpsNav, so I can't say if there is some setting that could
be adjusted to make things work smoother.
These are not standard double quotes but once they were converted
to double-quotes the error message disappeared.
They are slanted or curved quotes, very common on the Web and many
word-processing programs, but absent in EBCDIC. They are often also
referred to as "smart quotes". I wouldn't call them nonstandard; it's
the i which is nonstandard. And iSeries Python is definitely a
nonstandard Python in many respects (primarily due to the
nonstandardness of the i).
When I look at BiffRecords.py using EDTF on the i, I see blanks where
those characters are supposed to be. Clearly they are not actually
blanks; when I FTP the file from the IFS back to my PC, the slanted
quotes are still there.
I haven't touched those characters, so it is definitely possible for
xlwt to work without removing them. I still think the most likely
culprit is some CCSID issue.
It was the XLWT package that was confusing.
The instuctions indicated it should be installed via Python but I
couldn't figure out how to do that on the iSeries:
Yeah. That's because the i is so weird. I actually don't ever use
setup.py to install anything on the i. I unpacked everything on my PC
and then copied the unpacked xlwt directory (not xlwt-0.7.4, just
xlwt) directly into the site-packages directory on the IFS. Once in
site-packages, that should be good enough.
Unfortunately, it seems that this method
didn't create the doc or examples folder as the README.html stated :(
The maintainer of xlwt understandably has never had to deal with the
i, so would have no idea how to document for the i. If you really
want those folders, you can unpack them yourself on your PC and then
copy them over. They are not necessary.
The included documentation is pretty sparse, for both xlwt and xlrd.
The closest thing to a manual is probably this PDF:
http://www.simplistix.co.uk/presentations/python-excel.pdf
For all the xlwt and xlrd links in one place, go to
http://www.python-excel.org/
You will discover there is also a package called xlutils (that kind of
ties together xlrd and xlwt); many people use this on Linux, Windows,
and Mac; I personally do not use it, and have not tried getting it to
work on the i.
John
midrange.com
