Build 4.0.0.78 of xlsgen improves the handling of Excel sparklines in a number of ways :

- sparklines appear in the automatic source code generator, so you can manually create them in Excel and then obtain the corresponding source code in the programming language of your choice. No need to learn the xlsgen object model. Here is an example using VB of a group of 3 sparklines of type column :

Dim sparklineGroup001s1 As IXlsSparkline
Set sparklineGroup001s1 = wksht001.Sparklines.Add(enumSparklineType.sparklinetype_columns)
sparklineGroup001s1.SparklineColor(enumSparklineElement.sparklineelement_values) = RGB(36,65,97)
sparklineGroup001s1.SparklineColor(enumSparklineElement.sparklineelement_markers) = RGB(36,65,97)
sparklineGroup001s1.SparklineColor(enumSparklineElement.sparklineelement_firstvalue) = RGB(149,180,214)
sparklineGroup001s1.SparklineColor(enumSparklineElement.sparklineelement_lastvalue) = RGB(149,180,214)
sparklineGroup001s1.ShowEmptyCellsAs = enumChartInterpolate.chartinterpolate_no
Dim sparklineGroup001s1e0 As IXlsSparklineElement
Set sparklineGroup001s1e0 = sparklineGroup001s1.Add
sparklineGroup001s1e0.LocationRow = 3
sparklineGroup001s1e0.LocationColumn = 8
sparklineGroup001s1e0.DataAsFormula = "Sheet1!D3:G3"
Dim sparklineGroup001s1e1 As IXlsSparklineElement
Set sparklineGroup001s1e1 = sparklineGroup001s1.Add
sparklineGroup001s1e1.LocationRow = 4
sparklineGroup001s1e1.LocationColumn = 8
sparklineGroup001s1e1.DataAsFormula = "Sheet1!D4:G4"
Dim sparklineGroup001s1e2 As IXlsSparklineElement
Set sparklineGroup001s1e2 = sparklineGroup001s1.Add
sparklineGroup001s1e2.LocationRow = 5
sparklineGroup001s1e2.LocationColumn = 8
sparklineGroup001s1e2.DataAsFormula = "Sheet1!D5:G5"


- sparklines are also duplicated in worksheet duplicate scenarios.

- sparklines are also automatically updated when rows or columns are inserted or deleted, in order to reflect the changes.

Build 4.0.0.77 of xlsgen exposes table auto-filters in the object model. So beginning with this build, it's possible to either create or edit existing auto-filters in tables, and write them back in XLSX and XLSB files, thanks to the AutoFilter member exposed in the table results interface.

So here is how it works :

IXlsWorksheet worksheet = workbook.WorksheetByIndex[1];

// get the first table
IXlsTable t = worksheet.Tables.Item[1];

// edit the filter in the second column of the table
t.DataResults.AutoFilter.CustomFilter[2].CustomExpression = "> 2";

// remove the filter in the third column of the table
t.DataResults.AutoFilter.CustomFilter[3].Delete();

Some of the latest news regarding the radioactive trash that Windows 10 is, is that Microsoft is adding a new option for letting users decide whether installation from elsewhere than the Windows store is allowed.

Of course what matters is the default value for this option, and whether this stays the same over time. If history says anything, this option will change often, and for the worst. Worst for who you ask? Well, worst for all of us software vendors who started a business on what was known as an open platform and is now a walled garden.

A walled garden means that Microsoft has a say when your software is about to be installed on someone's computer. Note that the install step is just one step in converting a user as a customer, so Microsoft is creating additional obstacles for matters related to their bottom line.

Microsoft could have chosen, a decade ago, to add a OS-installed wizard that could sort out good apps from bad apps. It simply chose not to. Windows defender is a complete joke for instance. And it took the wrong choice at every new step.

For instance, when Windows 8 got introduced, their "smart screen" filtering already was created to throw shit at software vendors out there. Indeed, smart screen tells you that the application you are about to install may damage your computer, and you really have as a user to go hard at it to find out how to install the application anyway. This with Microsoft not even saying how this discrimination is built at some point and over time. Smart screen discriminates and makes it hard to install any WIN32 application, except Microsoft's own such as the Office suite. In other words, if you are a software vendor, you are simply on the wrong end of the knife, courtesy of Microsoft.

Questionable isn't it? Isn't Windows an open platform? By choosing to create a walled garden, what's left of Windows?

Apparently Microsoft does not remember what happened when they took this walled garden to another dimension with computer systems running Windows on ARM. This system made it so it was technically impossible to install any third-party WIN32 software. So a smart screen with no option, if you will. Guess what happened? Fiasco! those computer systems are no longer being sold.

Well perhaps there was a reason. Perhaps calling Windows such a thing betrayed the very definition of an open platform. Just like a scam.

So, back to latest news, this new option then. Microsoft wants software vendors to start shipping applications from Microsoft's own Windows store, meaning that no longer a software vendor would be allowed to make their own software available for download on their website. This, in addition, to the gazillion rules that a software vendor must adhere to in order to pass the validation process. This, in addition to taking a 30% cut if you dare to make your software not entirely free. This with Microsoft owning every bit of update schedules and so on.

This my friends isn't Windows anymore.

It's time to choose wisely what you want your future to be.

Now that you know that the Google play store and the Apple app store are filled with scamware and malware, perhaps you can hold your breath, take a minute or two, and think whether those walled gardens are really in your benefit.

Of course, for a locked down scenario such as a kiosque, I don't mind Windows being locked down. But I guess there were tools already for that in place to enforce it. And if all you want is a locked down operating system, corporations out there should perhaps consider a Linux variant after all. There is no reason to pay a Windows license to own a locked down operating system, when there is a competent alternative for this scenario. Just common sense.

Last but not least, while Microsoft actions against software vendors should be sued up their ass in court by governments out there, I don't want to end my post without mentioning the incredibly bad job done by anti-virus software vendors for a number of years. And if you ask what that means, let me explain. Anti-virus software is a piece of software that flags some piece of software as good or bad depending on their own choosing. If the anti-virus software is deployed on many Windows computers out there (McAfee, Norton, ...), this has deep implications on your business because overnight your software may be blacked out, marked as suspicious or even worse. It goes without saying that no one out there would buy software pictured like this, along with red flashing lights. In other words, you are out of business. But as it turns out, the anti-virus vendor may have incorrectly flagged your software. And, to add insult to injury, when it does so, it does not send you an email to let you know they just did ! Only a curious customer may sometimes in the future let you know that there is something going on. Sales are lost in the meantime. Reputation perhaps forever. And then guess what, you as a software vendor must on your own get in touch with such anti-virus vendor, good luck with that!, let them know to reconsider, go through their whiting process, if they have one. And if you are lucky, they'll stop black listing your software for some time. This clearly isn't a safe place for someone trying to run a business. Especially small vendors (individuals). Because obviously if you have the money to sue the anti-virus vendor in question, perhaps they would pay more attention to their own crappy software and practices.

I am never, as a software vendor, going to start writing, porting or migrating my applications to a walled garden unless someone PAYS ME to do so. Until then, this is simple domination over individuals, real globalization in other words, not survival to the fittest because in this unregulated world we are living in, it's big player takes all.

Build 4.0.0.76 of xlsgen includes a performance improvement for processing XLSX files. The loading of drawings which was optimized for XLS files is now also optimized for XLSX files (and their variants). Namely, drawings that referred to many times are loaded only once. This improves memory depending on how large are the drawings, and also speed depending on how many factored drawings are to be loaded.

Build 4.0.0.75 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to importing large CSV files, where large means wide columns.

Build 4.0.0.74 of xlsgen improves the compatibility with XLSB files when it comes to preserving the following objects :
- slicers, table slicers, OLAP slicers
- timelines, OLAP timelines
- conditional formattings (O14 and O15)
- range protection
- sparklines
- web extensions
- data validations (O14)
- pivot table references and decoupled
- workbook properties (O14 and O15)
- data model (power pivot)

O14 = Excel 2010
O15 = Excel 2013

I really don't give a shit about Microsoft but I have to warn those who have bought a computer running a recent version of Windows with Windows Update enabled that :

- Microsoft is unable to ship security updates, to a system that gets patched at least ten new holes every month. Do you trust guys like this ?

- Microsoft is ramping up their user privacy theft by doubling down on personal data capture in addition to purchasing companies whose only merit is to have built a personal data database (linkedin is one, but a number of others, think those calendar apps for instance).

Why isn't a freaking country sueing those guys to death already?

Are not governments supposed to enforce the law? Isn't the law written explicitely to make it a crime to steal personal user data and by doing so prevent any form of privacy ?

What will it take? to throw your smartphone or computer in the trash bin ?

Wisen up people ! Microsoft is NOT your friend !!

Build 4.0.0.73 of xlsgen adds the Windows 95/98-compatible version of xlsgen to our 32-bit Setup, zipped in the install folder. This Windows 95/98-compatible version proves useful for some of our customers and we recently broke the compatibility by having a DLL dependency unknown to Windows 95/98, and a number of Unicode-based WIN32 api calls that either do not work or are not available at all using Windows 95/98.

In the 32-bit Setup, the main binary file (xlsgen.dll) isn't compatible with Windows 95/98 since it's built with a version of Visual Studio C++ that is unable to produce an image that is compatible with Windows 95/98 (courtesy of Microsoft). That's why the Windows 95/98-compatible version is a separate binary, built with a much older version of Visual Studio C++, with the same name (xlsgen.dll) and the same API, i.e. no need to recompile your client code.

Build 4.0.0.72 of xlsgen is a fix pack including the following :
- custom theme correctly preserved in XLSB files
- sparklines correctly preserved in XLSB files
- font color in header/footer of XLSX /XLSB files : read/write and rendering

Build 4.0.0.71 of xlsgen adds form controls to our automatic source code generator which creates the source code for any Excel file in the programming language of your choice.

This addition to the source code generator is particularly useful because positioning form controls in the sheet may prove cumbersome and thanks to what we are making available, someone can now create a dialog-based user interface in Excel by hand, then pass the resulting file in the automatic source code generator in order to get the corresponding source code, and most notably the positions of each form control, complete with properties.

Build 4.0.0.70 of xlsgen makes it possible to compute the Gini() coefficient of a vector of values. The Gini() coefficient (Wikipedia) measures the dispersion of values, as a ratio between 0 and 1. For instance, if all values are the same, the Gini() coefficient is 0. The is a measure used in a number of markets.

The Gini() function is not an Excel function, which means it isn't part of any existing Excel version. It is an addition that only computes the value in the context of xlsgen.

Les journalistes d'aujourd'hui sont tellement peu vertueux, ceux qui sont le plus en vue fonctionnent par le recel qui est pourtant en principe puni par la loi, qu'il suffit, lorsqu'on regarde une émission (télévision, radio, ...) de compter le nombre de journalistes pour en déduire l'intérêt intellectuel et précisément vertueux inverse de l'émission.

Autrement dit, plus il y a de journalistes dans l'émission, moins le populo du quotidien a intérêt à regarder l'émission.

Faites le test, vous verrez ça marche !

Je n'ai aucun compte Twitter mais je vois ce service perdre en crédibilité année après année, c'en est ridicule.

La dernière annonce en date vise à ce que Twitter, de son propre chef, va mettre sous le tapis des tweets qu'ils jugent abusifs, inappropriés.

Erreur majeure ! cette censure vaut automatiquement à Twitter d'être qualifié d'éditeur et non juste d'un tuyau de communication. Et donc Twitter devient automatiquement juridiquement responsable pour tous les tweets qui sont postés sur la plateforme, y compris ceux de Daesch (pour autant que cette entité existe vraiment, j'ai de sérieux doutes là dessus).

Bref, avez-vous envie d'utiliser une plateforme qui a l'intention de censurer vos tweets ? Ce n'est plus votre compte et vos fils d'intérêt. Ce n'est plus qu'un produit fade destiné à complaire au politiquement correct. Décidement...

De toute façon il faut être clair sur le sujet, Fillon n'est pas plus à sa place aujourd'hui que Hollande ne l'était en 2012, alors qu'il prenait la place de Strauss-Kahn, ni Hamon qui a pris la place de Valls. Les gens, en particulier de gauche, se sont fait un plaisir lors des primaires de droite de sortir Sarkozy en votant pour Fillon.
Mais Fillon n'est pas un type pour le job. Il n'a pas les réseaux et donc il peut se faire pourrir facilement et ne trouve pas les relais pour éteindre l'incendie.
Ceci en dit long sur la démocratie en France. Il n'est pas possible de se présenter au poste de chef d'état si on n'a pas des réseaux d'influence derrière (dont les médias font partie intégrante). C'est d'ailleurs la raison pour laquelle le FN ne pourra jamais arriver au pouvoir.

Les primaires n'étaient pas dans l'esprit de la cinquième république. Alors peut-être quelqu'un prendra l'initiative de les effacer toutes les deux et de laisser ceux qui veulent se présenter se présenter.

La seule chose qui m'intéresse, après la déconfiture de Valls, un candidat des médias et de l'élite, c'est le vote des immigrés. Et avec près de 60% en faveur de Hamon (un peu à la mode de Fillon versus Sarkozy), cela laisse peu de possibilités que les immigrés n'aient pas voté Hamon comme un vote non pas d'adhésion, mais un vote anti-Valls. Un vote anti-média, anti-élite.

Maintenant, tout se paye. Les médias et l'élite, qui se voient désavoués en public, vont nous faire payer cette gifle contre leur poulain.

Qu'a fait Valls depuis son arrivée en tant que premier ministre? Construire un état de peur France, avec le soutien des médias (et des chaînes d'information en particulier). Il était temps qu'il dégage, la France n'a pas de temps à perdre avec ce fauteur de trouble. Ca a marché avec Sarkozy (émeutes orchestrées de 2005 précédant son arrivée au pouvoir), mais ça s'est vu...

Build 4.0.0.69 of xlsgen adds a VBA macro association property for a number of existing objects including :
- pictures
- text boxes
- vector shapes
- charts
- and also pictures, text boxes and vector shapes inside charts

This VBA macro association lets a user click on the object and trigger a macro. This was introduced in form controls earlier this year and has now been extended to all other objects in Excel.

Lets say you have an existing VBA macro called process in the spreadsheet in a VBA module. There is a property in the text box interface, called VBAMacro which you can invoke with mytextbox.VBAMacro = "process". And that's all it takes.

Build 4.0.0.68 of xlsgen includes several fixes :

- when processing XLSX/XLSM/XLSB files with VML streams (comments, ole objects, form controls, ...), there could be HTML fragments right within the XML stream which can cause havoc to parsers. This fix correctly handles <br> tags and so on.

- table copy maps internal formulas correctly. Internal formulas are formulas in tables referring to one or more of its columns by name (also called structured reference in Excel speak language).

As the now famous Lavabit email service relaunches with a new architecture aimed at plugging holes in security and deterring surveillance, I can only add my contribution which is to ask that passwords never be sent back again when they are lost. It is known that the good way to do this is to store only password hashes, very long ones, so that the service cannot send a lost password, and puts the burden where it belongs, the actual user. My 2 cents on the subject.

Build 4.0.0.67 of xlsgen makes it possible to add Form controls to spreadsheets.


Form controls in xlsgen

Any of 11 form control types can be added :

• Buttons
• Check boxes
• Radio buttons
• Labels
• Edit boxes
• Spin controls
• Scroll bars
• List boxes
• Combo boxes
• Group boxes
• Dialog boxes

They can be added to XLS as well as XLSX/XLSM and XLSB files, so you do not have to worry about the underlying file format.

Each form control has a number of custom properties to it and xlsgen exposes them. One of the most powerful ones is the ability to attach to it a VBA macro by its name.

Here is how to do add a button control and a list box (C++) :

// create a button and attach it an existing VBA macro

xlsgen::IXlsWorksheetPtr worksheet = workbook->AddWorksheet( L"sheet1" );

xlsgen::IXlsFormButtonPtr button = worksheet->FormControls->Buttons->Add(L"my button",2/*row1*/,2/*col1*/,5/*row2*/,6/*col2*/,0,0,0,0);

button->VBAMacro = L"=myButton_Click";


xlsgen::IXlsWorksheetPtr worksheet2 = workbook->AddWorksheet( L"sheet2" );

worksheet2->Label[2][7] = L"item1";
worksheet2->Label[3][7] = L"item2";
worksheet2->Label[4][7] = L"item3";
worksheet2->Label[5][7] = L"item4";

// create a list box and preselect two items

xlsgen::IXlsFormListBoxPtr listbox = worksheet2->FormControls->ListBoxes->Add(2,2,9,6,0,0,0,0);
listbox->SelectionType = xlsgen::listboxtype_multipleselection;
listbox->InputRange = L"=$G$2:$G$5";
listbox->SelectItem(3);
listbox->SelectItem(1);
listbox->LinkedCell = L"=$G$10";  

Build 4.0.0.66 of xlsgen adds support for Web functions, namely =ENCODEURL(string) and =WEBSERVICE(string). Support is read, write and calculation.

WEBSERVICE() takes a regular internet url as parameter and fetchs content off the internet. Internally the fetched content is converted to Unicode-2 so xlsgen can expose the result as a string and let a client application parse it. The fetched content can be virtually anything, a web page, an XML stream, a RSS feed. The WEBSERVICE() function has been introduced in Excel 2013.

ENCODEURL() takes a string and returns a string with some of its characters replaced with ones compatible with regular internet urls. Anything which is not a number or a letter is replaced a hexadecimal encoded value prefixed with a percent sign, as in %35. ENCODEURL() is often used to encode an url before it is passed to the WEBSERVICE() function. The ENCODEURL() function has been introduced in Excel 2013.