Okay, so I got lazy again and haven’t posted an update in a while…sorry.  Since my last update I’ve posted one more patch to the mailing list.  The new patch added or updated import and export functionality for six basic commands:

  • set text
  • set area text
  • insert/delete column/row
  • clear selection
  • format selection
  • resize column/row

The patch is available for download here.

After posting the patch I got an email from Morten giving me a list of some things to work on.  Most of them were pretty quick fixes, but a few of them required a little more work.  He mentioned that he was concerned with the amount of code required for the functions, which I agree with entirely–it doesn’t seem like what I’ve got so far is very elegant.  So I thought a little bit about how I might auto-generate the functions, but I haven’t really come up with a solution for that yet.  I spent a day or so looking at how MS Excel 2007 and OO Calc export their change tracking data and comparing it to how I’ve done it so far.  I put my findings into a page that I created here.  I haven’t posted a patch in the last two weeks (horrible, I know), partially because I took the last part of the CPA exam a week ago, and partially because my changes have been pretty minimal.  I should be posting a new patch in a day or so though.

I just realized how close we’re getting to the end of the GSOC program and I’m not nearly as far along I had hoped.  I still haven’t really added any of the Audit functionality that I proposed.  I think I need to work on the user interface by changing it completely or at least adding some dialogs so that it’s more user-friendly and useful to someone other than myself.  There is still a lot to be done: saving change tracking data with the actual workbook data, making it possible to view changes (export to a new worksheet), adding functionality for more commands, XML signing (maybe), and much more.  Should be a fun couple of weeks…