Re: interactions with OOffice graphs ?

[Philip Nienhuis]

Hi there:


CdeMills wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> problem statement: I'm performing measurement on semi-conductor devices,
> so I have many runs of scanning where both DC voltage and AC frequency are
> parameters. Then I use Octave to consolidate data, i.e. compute mean on
> repetitive runs. The next step would be to generate graphs in OOffice as
> follows: draw raw measurement pertaining to the same frequency or voltage
> as single points, then draw averaged values as continuous curves. The
> challenge is that, in the spreadsheet diagram tool, the choice is either
> lines, either points, either lines and points. Each set of data should
> have its own drawing format. So the question, are there interfaces between
> Octave and graph "objects", in such a way to automatically produce the
> required diagram inside OOffice spreadsheet ?
> 

Why do you need graphs in an OOo Calc spreadsheet? 
Octave has ample graphics options, much more customizable than OOo Calc
(which is not bad by any means, for that matter). 
>From the rest of your description I get the impression that you do not need
OOo spreadsheets at all.

A straight answer:
I think what you want to achieve is not possible (yet).
Under Windows, when MS-Office has been installed, there's an ActiveX server
running which can be invoked to easily transfer objects (data, pictures,
text, ...) to and from MS-Office applications.
OpenOffice.org simply doesn't have such a mechanism.

Based on my experience with building the current OOo Calc & Excel interfaces
for Octave (see io package on octave.sf.net) I think it might not be too
hard to do this in Java for someone proficient in Java *and* XML (I'm
neither.)
But both available open source Java options for OOo Calc (esp. OFD Toolkit
and -to a lesser extent- jOpenDocument) are still far too immature yet.
Maybe in two years time.....

But.... 
If you were to use Excel format (no endorsement! but Excel *files* can be
read and written by OOo Calc and Octave as well, on any platform) there are
good platform-independent options (i.e., Java-based). Apache POI is very
good and mature IMO.
In the octave-forge IO package there are Java-based Excel interfaces, too
(one of them based on Apache POI); these can be used as starting point for
implementing what you want.

For the time being, I'd suggest to explore Octave's graphics output first.

Philip



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