[ba-ohs-talk] MS Office Compatibility
This article
http://www.javaworld.com/javaqa/2002-05/01-qa-0503-excel3_p.html
at javaworld.com on using the Apache POI project to read and write Excel
files leads to
http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/ which is the POI home page. (01)
What's interesting here is that POI is a system to read and write MS Ole 2
documents (Word, Excel) using Java. Combine POI with Multivalent and
you're that much closer to a HyperScope. (02)
Interesting quote from the POI home page: (03)
"POI stands for Poor Obfuscation Implementation. Why would we name our
project such a derogatory name? Well, Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document
Format is a poorly conceived thing. It is essentially an archive structured
much like the old DOS FAT filesystem. Redmond chose, instead of using tar,
gzip, zip or arc, to invent their own archive format that does not provide
any standard encryption or compression, is not very appendable and is prone
to fragmentation.
Poi is also a Hawaiian delicacy that Merriam Webster's dictionary defines
as: "A Hawaiian food of taro root cooked, pounded, and kneaded to a paste
and often allowed to ferment." This seemed strangely descriptive of the
file format. " (04)