xlsReadWrite Pro and embedding objects and files in Excel worksheets

-----Original Message-----
From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org 
[mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Hin-Tak Leung
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 8:50 AM
To: James W. MacDonald
Cc: mwkimpel at gmail.com; Mark W. Kimpel MD 
(mkimpel at iupui.edu); r-devel at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [Rd] xlsReadWrite Pro and embedding objects and 
files in Excel worksheets

James W. MacDonald wrote:

Have you looked at RDCOMClient? I would imagine you could 

do what you 

want with this package.

http://www.omegahat.org/RDCOMClient/

Interesting point. But the dcom client would be windows-specific?
(those I mentioned - the perl mondules, openoffice, run on 
windows, as well as unix boxes - not sure about gnumeric :-).

In fact there is a very perverse way of doing it - 
ActiveState provides a PerlCom product for hooking up dcom 
with activestate perl. i.e. you can go via R -> RDComClient 
-> PerlCom -> ActiveState Perl ->
SpreadSheet::* . Just so that it does not require Excel 
installed or an MS Office license...

In that sense, probably technology based on bridging over 
odbc is also acceptable?

HTL

Hin-Tak Leung wrote:

I don't know of any native xls read/write facility in R, either in 
core or as add-ons (I could be wrong), but if you want some source 
code to scavenge on to build some R package out of it, 

there are two 

perl modules, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel 
which are small enough to "read from front cover to back 

cover", so 

to speak, might be useful for reference and steal code from.

The other open-source packages which can read/write excel 

files are 

gnumeric and openoffice and probably too big to find one's 

way around 

the source code to steal there :-).

Good luck.

HTL

Mark W Kimpel wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding 

Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel 

workbooks. I 

have gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have 
become compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, 

in fact, is 

why I bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have 

been saving 

graphics as PDF files, then inserting them as object in 

Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in 
sheets of a workbook directly from within R. I would also 

like to be 

able to save my current R workspace as an object embedded 

in a sheet 

so that in the future, if packages change, I could go back and 
recreate the analysis. I do not need to be able to 

manuipulate files 

that R has not created, like a PDF file from another 

user. I would, 

however, like to be able to save my graphics as PDF files 

inside a 

worksheet, even if it meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other 

database 

could handle all that archiving, let me say that that is 

not what my 

colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they 

can take home 

on there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they 
themselves can contain many embedded files, so it keeps 

our virtual 

desks neater and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous 

benefit to me 

and hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think 

that all 

scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most 
biomedical researches still store date in Excel files. This won't 
solve everybody's needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to 

see if any 

of those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark