openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org Calc improvements

I've spent a few weeks in my spare time hacking the Calc source to fix a bug that I would really like working so that I can implement a new feature in SWIG, my usual hacking space.

Calc lacks decent support for multi-line formulas. I have posted a patch to Issue 35913 to fix this. The patch enables the display of formulas, which result in multiple lines, to correctly display the multiple lines. Previously the spreadsheet application would replace the new line character with spaces, so it was impossible to have a formula result displayed in more than one line. The patch also fixes numerous other multiline issues, as outlined in Issue 35913.

The patches improved over time and are now in an OpenOffice.org Child Workspace - calcmultiline ready for incorporation into OpenOffice.org 3.2. Various versions of the patch were also incorporated into go-oo. I suggest using one of the prebuilt binaries from go-oo (version 3.0) if anyone is interested in trying out the patch before the official version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 is released.

My original patches are available in a Linux pre-built version: http://ccgi.fultondesigns.plus.com/OOo_3.0.0_080802_unxlngi6_install.tar.gz and was based on a 3.0 dev build (DEV300_m16) and might have some other dev build issues. The file is 146MB in size and I've got very limited daily bandwidth, so if you have any problems downloading it, let me know - wsf@fultondesigns.co.uk. but the go-oo builds mentioned above are probably your best bet.

William

9 May 2009