Antiexcel

Short Description

Antiexcel is a Microsoft-Excel file reader. It shows the excel file on a text console or an x-console. It can be used as an attachment viewer for any text-based email client ( ex. mutt)

About the author

My name is Peter Borkuti. I am using text console based email clients (like mutt) and it was annoying, that I had to download the excel attachment into my desktop PC and run OpenOffice just for viewing an excel file. So I wrote these small programs (and texts in 2003). Enjoy it.

About the name

I got the idea from a brilliant program, antiword, which can show MS Word files on text console.

Files

• antiexcel a bash script wrapper

• csvviewer a bash script for showing semicolon separated files.
  usage : ./csvviewer filename
  example: ./csvviewer example.xls

• antiexcel-parse.pl
  a perl script for printing an xls file in a semicolon separated format.
  usage: ./antiexcel-parse.pl filename

• example.xls
  An excel file for example. It was made by OpenOffice.Calc

• README.md
  This text

• copyright
  Copyright notices

INSTALL

Installation instructions for antiexcel

Dependencies

libspreadsheet-parseexcel-perl

in Debian : apt-get install libspreadsheet-parseexcel-perl as root

Administrators

Please, dont install a system wide copy of this program. It is only in ALPHA state- you be warned.

USERS

Let's say, your login name is 'john'

• TRY out these programs

Example: ./antiexcel example.xls You should see on the screen a simple spreadsheet.

• PLACE these files into your bin directorie.

Example: mkdir ~/bin cp csvviewer ~/bin/. cp antiexcel ~/bin/. cp antiexcel-parse.pl ~/bin/.

• Modify your .mailcap in order to viewing the attachments If you dont want to use this program to viewing xls email- attachments, you dont have to do this.

Append theese two lines into your ~/.mailcap file:

application/msexcel; ~/bin/antiexcel %s; needsterminal; application/vnd.ms-excel; ~/bin/antiexcel %s; needsterminal;

Example:

cp ~/.mailcap mailcap.bak
# DANGEROUS: DONT FORGET THE DOUBLE '>' SIGN!
# IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE DO : cp mailcap.bak ~/.mailcap
cat >>~/.mailcap <<DONE
application/msexcel; ~/bin/antiexcel %s
application/vnd.ms-excel; ~/bin/antiexcel %s

DONE

• Enjoy it.

Peter Borkuti