Creating Oasis OpenDocument spreadsheet files using ODS tagsets

[hollandnumerics]

At NESUG 2007 Eric Gebhart suggested that ODS Markup (https://lexjansen.com/nesug/nesug07/np/np08.pdf) could be used to create ODS destinations for Microsoft Office Open and Oasis Open Document Format (created by LibreOffice and OpenOffice). It is now 2019 and we have ODS EXCEL, POWERPOINT and WORD, but nothing for LibreOffice Calc.

However, I think I know why it hasn't happened, as my attempts to combine tagsets with ODS PACKAGE to create zipped XML files have surfaced a "feature" which limits the XML files concurrently created to just 2, whereas LibreOffice Calc files require at least 3 (content.xml, styles.xml and meta.xml) to be in the zipped package.

Has anyone successfully created an ODS destination for *.ods (LibreOffice Calc) files?...........Phil

[hollandnumerics]

Another option occurred to me this evening: could you use PROC JLAUNCHER to create a LibreOffice Calc file from a SAS data set, as there are Java frameworks available to create such files?

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:

  I remember that paper! Have you tried to just open an XLSX file using LibreOffice. This is a really old post (2012), but at the very bottom, looks like someone had success opening XLSX files: https://askubuntu.com/questions/210213/can-i-open-excel-xlsx-files-with-libreoffice-calc .

Cynthia

[hollandnumerics]

Cynthia,

I can confirm that LibreOffice can read and create XLSX files directly, and I do use that facility on a regular basis, but there are public organisations, and even governments, internationally that have standardised on the OpenDocument file formats.

I've done a fair amount of investigation into the structure and contents of XLSX and *.ods files, and concluded that the Open Source *.ods files, which can also be read by newer versions of Excel, should be smaller and hold more precise numeric values (including dates and times) than the equivalent XLSX files. Surely it would be better to support an Open Source file format, than a proprietary one, especially when it has size and precision advantages, and no readability issues?

........Phil