Build 4.0.0.43 of xlsgen continues and finishes what was begun with the earlier build, by adding the 4 last functions (out of 6) newly introduced by Microsoft in their Office 365 offerings as well as the online version of Excel, namely :

- IFS(expression1, result_if_true_1 [, expression2, result_if_true_2, ...]) : combine multiple conditions in a single statement. This function is useful for avoiding IF() nesting. The official documentation is here.

- SWITCH(expression, value1, result1, [,value2, result2, ...] [default value]) : switch statement for selecting a discrete value out of n values. Optional use of a default value (last parameter). The official documentation is here.

- MAXIFS(range, range1, expression1, [, range2, expression2]) : combine multiple conditions for calculating a max value. The official documentation is here.

- MINIFS(range, range1, expression1, [, range2, expression2]) : combine multiple conditions for calculating a min value. The official documentation is here.

Complete with TEXTJOIN() and CONCAT(), these are the 6 new functions that xlsgen makes available to all Excel users, not just a fraction like Microsoft would like to do.

Je me demande ce que ça dit d'une société le fait qu'une entreprise comme Facebook, qui n'a aucune valeur en soi, se remplisse à ce point les poches d'argent trimestre après trimestre. Il est temps que ça cesse. Il est temps que les gens comprennent qu'il est de leur intérêt d'utiliser des clouds privés qu'ils hébergeront eux-mêmes pour une somme modique. En vertu de laquelle aucune entreprise ou intermédiaire n'aura à leur imposer quoi que ce soit ni leur servir des publicités ciblées ou encore vendre les profils très riches de données aux plus offrants (sachant que dans ces plus offrants se trouve les services de police du monde entier).

Une prise de conscience est nécessaire. L'internet est par définition un inter-net, un croisement de réseaux. Facebook est un goulot d'étranglement, et à ce titre n'est pas un acteur moral et éthique d'internet.

Build 4.0.0.42 of xlsgen adds read, write and calc support for two new functions : CONCAT() and TEXTJOIN().

Those functions are part of updates that are not made available to regular Excel 2016 purchasers. Microsoft has made them available for those purchasing Excel 2016 on a subscription basis (called Office 365), or using Excel online (desktop or mobile).

We thought there was a justification then for bringing those functions to ALL Excel users, including previous versions of Excel. This is made possible in xlsgen by natively supporting the calculation of those functions.

- CONCAT() is a variant of the existing CONCATENATE() function. What it supports is, in addition to literals such as numbers, strings and cell references, it supports cell range areas, and also the maximum buffer is 32KB not 8KB. The official documentation for the CONCAT() function is here.

- TEXTJOIN() is a variant of CONCAT() and makes it possible to define a delimiter between concatenated strings as well as specify how empty cells should be handled. Again, the full documentation is here.


worksheet.Formula[5][2] = L"=CONCAT(B1:B4)";
worksheet.CalculateFormula(5,2);

==> bb1bb2bb3bb4


worksheet.Formula[5][2] = L"=TEXTJOIN(\":\";TRUE;B1:B4;C1:C4)";
worksheet.CalculateFormula(5,2);

==> bb1:bb2:bb3:bb4:cc1:cc2:cc3:cc4

...et tous les trois sont en train de couler. Résultats trimestriels catastrophiques pour les 3.

Microsoft parce que ce sont des menteurs invétérés, des collaborateurs fidèles de la police, et qu'à un moment donné il faut bien que la justice de l'au delà les punisse. C'est une entreprise immorale qui doit cesser d'exister.

Intel parce que ce sont des incapables depuis près de 40 ans. La puce 68000 de Motorola, au début des années 80, était déjà quasi 32 bits et bien mieux architecturée pour écrire des programmes que cette daube de 80x86. Nous sommes en 2016, et à cause de la force commerciale de Intel, nous en sommes toujours au 80x86. Lamentable! Là aussi la justice finit par arriver.

Apple sont des trous du cul. Il y a un type chez Apple, un français je crois, qui sait faire de l'OS et grâce à qui les utilisateurs ont pensé il y a quelques années que l'iphone et l'ipad et le mac étaient de bons outils. Depuis, cette personne est partie, et Apple n'est plus que ce qu'elle a toujours été, une entreprise bobo qui cherche à faire du marketing tendanciel et non de l'informatique. Ils doivent être punis aussi pour l'ensemble de leur oeuvre.

Build 4.0.0.41 of xlsgen ignores the DPI (dots per inch) at which your screen is set in order to render or print/preview sheets, making it possible to create such objects predictably from any computer.

J'ai du mal à comprendre que Firefox, puis Chrome et maintenant même des sites internet (le bon coin par exemple), rendent la vie impossible à ceux qui osent encore utiliser Windows XP.

Pour ce qui est des logiciels open source, je croyais pourtant que la devise était de supporter un maximum de gens. Et il se trouve que les utilisateurs de Windows XP représentent un groupe plus gros qu'aucun autre système d'exploitation à part Windows 7. Dans ces conditions, laisser tomber Windows XP, c'est jouer le rôle d'agent de Microsoft, et pousser à acheter du nouveau matériel.

Avec les sites internet, cela va encore plus loin, car cela voudrait dire que la qualité du site internet dépend du système d'exploitation que vous utilisez, ce qui n'est pas vrai, sauf pour les sites mal construits, ou les sites qui ont un agenda. Un site internet est fait de HTML et de javascript côté client, et la capacité de rendu est liée uniquement au navigateur web, pas au système d'exploitation. Là encore, comment ne pas voir là la main d'un agent de Microsoft, joué par un site internet comme le bon coin !

L'informatique grand public file un mauvais coton.

Build 4.0.0.40 of xlsgen fixes problems related to rendering content in cells (as in PDF, XPS, ...) :

- improved clipping of right-aligned numbers

- boolean values expressed in human friendly terms (i.e. TRUE/FALSE) instead of 1 and 0. Also affected by the current rendering locale (i.e. if the formula language is chosen to be French, the boolean values will be VRAI/FAUX, respectively).

Build 4.0.0.39 of xlsgen adds support for Excel files generated by third-party tools, in which :
- there is a usage of local namespaces across XML streams
- there is a usage of absolute paths to internal parts as opposed to relative paths
- there is dysfonctional usage of style attributes

It has been chosen to read those files rather than flag them as invalid, for the reason that Excel does it.

Build 4.0.0.38 of xlsgen makes sure that encrypted XLS and XLSX files (and their variants) are re-encrypted automatically when the file is written back after an update. The re-encryption uses the same algorithms and parameters than the decryption, which means xlsgen is neutral. This comes as an expectation since there is no ground for xlsgen removing the protection in a file without the client program asking for it (by resetting the password).

Build 4.0.0.37 of xlsgen supports all cryptographic providers that may be used in order to decrypt XLS files (and their variants), namely :

- Weak Encryption (XOR)
- Office 97/2000 Compatible (RC4 + MD5)
- RC4, Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider v1.0
- RC4, Microsoft Base DSS and Diffie-Hellman Cryptographic Provider
- RC4, Microsoft DH SChannel Cryptographic Provider
- RC4, Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider v1.0
- RC4, Microsoft Enhanced DSS and Diffie-Hellman Cryptographic Provider
- RC4, Microsoft Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider (Prototype) (Windows XP only)
- RC4, Microsoft Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider
- RC4, Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider
- RC4, Microsoft Strong Cryptographic Provider

Build 4.0.0.36 of xlsgen makes it possible to read XLSX files generated by third parties that don't quite conform to the specs, where rows and columns in sheets are not specified on a per cell basis.

Ce Brexit est avant tout un revers pour François Hollande, car Angela Merkel s'en remettra (la croissance en Allemagne est bonne). Je me demande, alors que je vois les coups pleuvoir sur Hollande semaine après semaine, si le système n'a pas avant tout décidé que Hollande ne devait pas être en mesure de pouvoir se présenter aux élections de 2017. Un coup d'état oligarchique proprement anti-démocratique et soutenu en l'occurence par l'intégralité des médias français (qui, hasard sans doute, sont aux mains de quelques oligarques).

Quant aux mouvements boursiers brutaux, ceux qui agissent en ce moment devraient être poursuivis en justice et mis en prison.

BFM est-elle autre chose qu'une chaine de pure propagande?

Je pose la question car ces derniers jours, la question est manifeste. Il y a un agenda politique derrière tout ça.

Tout est dans le titre. Il s'agit du titre d'un article de presse. Rien à rajouter.

To those believing that could services is the future, today came a wrenching story that tells so much :

extrait : "We have some tough news: We’re going to be shutting down the ThinkUp service on July 18 and issuing a refund then for the balance of all member subscriptions. There have been significant changes from Instagram, Twitter and Facebook that make it too hard for us to keep the service running, especially since we’ve been struggling as a business. We’re sorry, and we’re going to try to handle this shutdown the right way."

Those guys at ThinkUp are top notch. What happens is their lifeline is simply being cut by bigger cloud actors, who want the entire pie of cloud business.

Big cloud actors are using the third-party services propaganda to avance their agenda, which in truth is to be the one and only one billing customers, fat subscriptions, with no competition in sight for keeping the prices fair. This is the definition of lack of freedom for small businesses out there, which are the jobs of tomorrow. Jobs of tomorrow, unless a couple of big cloud actors eat it all and the entire idea of third-parties become non-existent.

Just know in which world you are before you set expectations. I personally don't think it bodes well for small actors,which is not unusual after all.

Apple's WWDC event hardly covers the news today. This is unseen since 2007. It begs the question, is Apple dead? I know WWDC is for developers, but without developer hype, the platform is nothing. I can see developer fatigue even without having written a single line of iOS code. Apple is so dead it isn't funny.

With the news that Microsoft is using fake money to purchase LinkedIn, a professional social network, I can only wonder what kind of business are those guys in ?
They used to be known for selling an operating system, most parts stolen and turn into patents with the complacency of the US government. But with such a freaking entry into social networks, it seems to me that Microsoft will find it hard to justify anymore gathering personal from Windows users, as it apparently started doing silently a number of years ago. The level of conflict of interest will become so high that Microsoft won't publicly be let do anything without people shouting at them that what they are doing is unethical.

This is about the perfect time to start testing a Linux install, I believe.

Build 4.0.0.35 of xlsgen fixes three problems related to the calculation engine :

- SMALL() function ignores empty cells. Before this build it would take them as zeros and it could affect the result of the function.

- DGET() function (and other database functions) correctly handles empty fields in the third parameter where a range of field names are provided. Before this build, the function in this case would always return the #NUM! error.

- MATCH() function returns correct cell index when processing numbers.

Build 4.0.0.34 of xlsgen adds support for decrypting XLS files encrypted using the Microsoft Enhanced Cryptopgraphic provider, which uses SHA1 and RC4 algorithms. This comes in addition to the two other encryption modes which were already supported by xlsgen (XOR and regular RC4).

To decrypt and read such file, just pass the password :

xlsgen::IXlsEnginePtr engine( __uuidof(xlsgen::CoXlsEngine) );

engine->Workbooks->OpenPassword = L"knownpassword";
xlsgen::IXlsWorkbookPtr wbk = engine->Open( L"input\\protected.xls", L"output\\unprotected.xls" );
wbk->WorksheetByIndex[1]->Cell[1][1]->HtmlLabel = L"unprotected by <b>xlsgen</b>";
wbk->Close();

Build 4.0.0.33 of xlsgen fixes a problem in the calculation engine, related to the MOD() function. Support for non-integer values.