> You really can't beat Excel for 'crunch some data & make a graph' in 90%
> of
> cases.  The .zip I've attached shows a typical XL dashboard type app.  It
> grabs data (3 days of readings) from the Oz government weather site, and
> puts it on a graph.  It'll refresh when you open it, you may get a warning
> message, just say ok.
>
> Nothing spectacular, except it's two minutes work & zero code.
>
> In make that XL, you do the following:
>
> - Click 'Data, Import External, New web query'.  That flicks up a browser.
> - Enter the web address,
> <http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDN60801/IDN60801.94768.shtml> in this
> case.
> - Once loaded, select the tables you want.  In XL2000, you had pick a
> number
> corresponding to a table, later versions puts arrows next to them that you
> just tick.
> - Hit 'Import'
> - The query will run, and dump the data on the sheet.
> - Right click on the data, and select 'Data Range Properties'
> - Tick 'Refresh data on file open', and 'Refresh every xx minutes' if you
> like.
>
> That's the data import done, now to the chart.
>
> - On the data sheet, select the range for the temperature, probably
> B4:B162.
> - Click the 'Chart' button, pick Line (top left, no markers), click
> 'Next'.
> - Click 'Series', put 'Temperaure' as the Name, and the 'X-Axis labels' as
> A4:A162.
> - Fiddle with the various options, like turn the legend off, Axis labels,
> and click 'Next'
> - Pick 'Put chart on New sheet', hit 'Finish'
>
> Now to add rainfall line.
>
> - Right-click on the chart, select 'Source data'
> - Hit 'Add' for a new series.  Enter 'Rainfall' as the 'Name'
> - It'll pick up the X-axis labels, so just get the data (values); should
> be
> N4:N162.
>
> Ok, it plots the rainfall on the temperature axis, not a huge problem, but
> it usually scales funny (bit small).
>
> - Right-click on the 'Rainfall' line (probably purple), and select 'Format
> data series'.
> - Select the Axis tab, change it to 'Secondary'.
>
> That'll put the rain figures scale on the right-hand side of the chart.
>
> That's it, done in a few minutes.  10 years ago you'd need a team of
> programmers to do that.  Now, anyone can do it.  That upsets a lot of
> people, whether it's job security fears, lusers and their crappy M$ tools,
> and so on.
>
> If you look at the chart, it has a few flaws.  There are gaps due to the
> data coming in a few separate chunks, each with their own header.  There's
> various ways to fix this, but not obvious to most people.  Only 3 days of
> data, why can't it save the old stuff?  Only one city, how do we pick a
> different one?  Plenty of work, just stuff that you may not like (oh,
> boo-hoo).
>
> In a corporate environment you give people a link to the spreadsheet,
> which
> then either connects to a database or a text file dump (good for daily
> stats).  Or you could piss about making java apps to put on your intranet.

> Tony Smith wrote a post over a week ago, which even I missed (as it
> was buried in another thread). Although this stuff may be obvious to
> some, I believe it deserves its own thread -- it's definitely been an
> eye opener to me.
>
> When Tony said:
>
>> Excel + 'Get External Data' + Autorefresh + PivotTable/PivotChart
>> keeps a
>> lot of people happy, and it's dead easy to pull stuff off the web or a
>> database, summarise it in a pretty graph, and have it refresh every few
>> minutes (aka dashboard apps).  The last guy hadn't finished rambling
>> about
>> he'd use XML, AJAX and Java and many other letters of the alphabet
>> when I
>> showed him the finished result.  He hasn't spoken to me since  :)
>
> ...frankly, I thought that he's exaggerating (who doesn't, to make a
> good story better?). However, it literally took me about five minutes
> to go through Tony's tutorial, and display the finished result.
>
> I never suspected that importing an HTML table into Excel is simply a
> matter of point-and-click!
>
>> You really can't beat Excel for 'crunch some data & make a graph' in
>> 90% of
>> cases.  The .zip I've attached shows a typical XL dashboard type
>> app.  It
>> grabs data (3 days of readings) from the Oz government weather site, and
>> puts it on a graph.  It'll refresh when you open it, you may get a
>> warning
>> message, just say ok.
>>
>> Nothing spectacular, except it's two minutes work & zero code.
>>
>> In make that XL, you do the following:
>>
>> - Click 'Data, Import External, New web query'.  That flicks up a
>> browser.
>> - Enter the web address,
>> <http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDN60801/IDN60801.94768.shtml> in
>> this case.
>> - Once loaded, select the tables you want.  In XL2000, you had pick a
>> number
>> corresponding to a table, later versions puts arrows next to them
>> that you
>> just tick.
>> - Hit 'Import'
>> - The query will run, and dump the data on the sheet.
>> - Right click on the data, and select 'Data Range Properties'
>> - Tick 'Refresh data on file open', and 'Refresh every xx minutes' if
>> you
>> like.
>>
>> That's the data import done, now to the chart.
>>
>> - On the data sheet, select the range for the temperature, probably
>> B4:B162.
>> - Click the 'Chart' button, pick Line (top left, no markers), click
>> 'Next'.
>> - Click 'Series', put 'Temperaure' as the Name, and the 'X-Axis
>> labels' as
>> A4:A162.
>> - Fiddle with the various options, like turn the legend off, Axis
>> labels,
>> and click 'Next'
>> - Pick 'Put chart on New sheet', hit 'Finish'
>>
>> Now to add rainfall line.
>>
>> - Right-click on the chart, select 'Source data'
>> - Hit 'Add' for a new series.  Enter 'Rainfall' as the 'Name'
>> - It'll pick up the X-axis labels, so just get the data (values);
>> should be
>> N4:N162.
>>
>> Ok, it plots the rainfall on the temperature axis, not a huge
>> problem, but
>> it usually scales funny (bit small).
>>
>> - Right-click on the 'Rainfall' line (probably purple), and select
>> 'Format
>> data series'.
>> - Select the Axis tab, change it to 'Secondary'.
>>
>> That'll put the rain figures scale on the right-hand side of the chart.
>>
>> That's it, done in a few minutes.  10 years ago you'd need a team of
>> programmers to do that.  Now, anyone can do it.  That upsets a lot of
>> people, whether it's job security fears, lusers and their crappy M$
>> tools,
>> and so on.
>>
>> If you look at the chart, it has a few flaws.  There are gaps due to the
>> data coming in a few separate chunks, each with their own header.  
>> There's
>> various ways to fix this, but not obvious to most people.  Only 3
>> days of
>> data, why can't it save the old stuff?  Only one city, how do we pick a
>> different one?  Plenty of work, just stuff that you may not like (oh,
>> boo-hoo).
>>
>> In a corporate environment you give people a link to the spreadsheet,
>> which
>> then either connects to a database or a text file dump (good for daily
>> stats).  Or you could piss about making java apps to put on your
>> intranet.
>
> I wonder if any "real" development suites allow for such simple
> point-and-click import of data from the internet?
>
> Vitaliy

> Gerhard Fiedler <lists <at> connectionbrazil.com> writes:
>
> >
> > Vitaliy wrote:
> >
> > > This brings up another question I had: what *can't* you do in OpenOffice,
> > > that you can do in MS Office, in a common office environment? Are the
> > > files completely interchangeable?
> >
> > I vaguely remembered that there were some things in Excel that I did miss
> > in Calc, but no details... There seems to be quite a bit on the web, though
> > (mostly biased, it seems, but still :)
> >
> > <www.google.com/search?q=comparison+openoffice+microsoft+office>
> >
> > <www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf>
> > <http://www.linux.com/articles/45689>
> > <www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm>
> >
> > Gerhard
> >
> Some functions present in XL were not in OO (as of 1-2 years ago), or the names
> are different.  I tried to use my XL files in OO and failed miserably, mostly
> because I use a lot of functions (usually :-)).  I do not know if this has been
> resolved since I checked.
>
> This is not to say that OO cannot do things excel can, it's a portability issue,
> not unctionality.
>
> Sergey
>

>> I vaguely remembered that there were some things in Excel
>> that I did miss in Calc, but no details... There seems to be
>> quite a bit on the web, though (mostly biased, it seems, but still :)
>>
>> <www.google.com/search?q=comparison+openoffice+microsof
>>    
> t+office>
>  
>> <www.openoffice.org/product/docs/ms2007vsooo2.pdf>
>> <http://www.linux.com/articles/45689>
>> <www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm>
>>    
>
>
> Most of it is VBA and ActiveX, not a great loss in most cases.  The rest of
> it is how stuff *should* work, a bit like the 1900 leap year bug XL has
> (which it inherited from Lotus 123, so it's actually a feature), or
> statistics nerds arguing about the 23rd decimal place.
>
> That last article is actually on Word, and has a few biases & errors.  Right
> at the beginning is this quote:
>
> "Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for hyphenation,
> automatic page breaks, and the last line in a fully justified paragraph."
>
> ...which is bollocks.  I'm not sure what a "fully justified paragraph"
> actually is, but if he's talking widow/orphan control, he's wrong.
>  

> > That last article is actually on Word, and has a few biases
> & errors.  
> > Right at the beginning is this quote:
> >
> > "Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for
> > hyphenation, automatic page breaks, and the last line in a
> fully justified paragraph."
> >
> > ...which is bollocks.  I'm not sure what a "fully justified
> paragraph"
> > actually is, but if he's talking widow/orphan control, he's wrong.
> >  
>
> Full justification is combined left-and-right justification.
> Look at the columns of the newspaper, you will see full
> justification, where the line is kept against the left
> margin, but then stretched to the right so that all the lines
> in a column have the same width, regardless of the number of
> characters in the line. This can become amusing when the
> columns are narrow, and the words are long... you see very stretched
> words like: "a    n   d      i   f".

> >> <www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm>
>  
> > That last article is actually on Word, and has a few biases
> & errors.
> > Right at the beginning is this quote:
> >
> > "Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for
> > hyphenation, automatic page breaks, and the last line in a fully
> > justified paragraph."
> >
> > ...which is bollocks. I'm not sure what a "fully justified
> paragraph"
> > actually is [...]
>
> First shoot, then ask, hm? :)
>
> > [...] but if he's talking widow/orphan control, he's wrong.
>
> Apparently he's not talking about widow/orphan control,
> because that has nothing to do with left/right/fully
> justified or centered (which are the four common
> justification formats).
>
> Writer allows to define how the last line of a fully
> justified paragraph should be aligned. In Word, it's left
> justified, but there is not much that justifies this
> assumption: a fully justified paragraph is at the same time
> left justified, right justified and centered. The last line
> may have to be any of the three -- and Writer conveniently
> provides these three choices.

>>>> <www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm>
>>  
>>> That last article is actually on Word, and has a few biases & errors.
>>> Right at the beginning is this quote:
>>>
>>> "Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for
>>> hyphenation, automatic page breaks, and the last line in a fully
>>> justified paragraph."
>>>
>>> ...which is bollocks. I'm not sure what a "fully justified paragraph"
>>> actually is [...]
>>
>> First shoot, then ask, hm? :)
>>
>>> [...] but if he's talking widow/orphan control, he's wrong.
>>
>> Apparently he's not talking about widow/orphan control, because that
>> has nothing to do with left/right/fully justified or centered (which
>> are the four common justification formats).
>>
>> Writer allows to define how the last line of a fully justified
>> paragraph should be aligned. In Word, it's left justified, but there is
>> not much that justifies this assumption: a fully justified paragraph is
>> at the same time left justified, right justified and centered. The last
>> line may have to be any of the three -- and Writer conveniently
>> provides these three choices.
>
> Yep, see other comment.  Should have Googled it first like everyone
> else, I suppose.  I got distracted by the missing-but-actually-there
> options.
>
> Anyway, if you think about it, it's a useless option.  

> >
> > Anyway, if you think about it, it's a useless option.  
>
> I don't follow you here. (Maybe you think about it? :)
>
> A paragraph can basically be left aligned (all lines have the
> same left end and the right end varies), right aligned (all
> lines have the same right end and the left end varies) or
> centered (the distances of left and right ends to a straight
> vertical line left and right are the same).
>
> Now when you justify a paragraph -- that is, you make left
> and right ends a straight vertical line --, you basically
> still maintain the quality of left, right or center, it just
> is visible only in the last line. It's just that Word doesn't
> do this -- all justified paragraphs in Word are underneath
> left-aligned --, and so all who grew up with Word don't know
> it otherwise.
>
> > Right align is pointless (yuk), and forcing either left or
> justify (by
> > a
> > style) is pointless too.  To be useful, you'd have to set
> it for each
> > individual paragraph, and life's too short for that.
>
> You must be talking about something else. Giving a justified
> paragraph a right-aligned or centered last partial line is
> just as valid as giving it a left-aligned last partial line
> -- it's just less "Wordy"...

> > When you say 'paragraph justify centered', I take it you
> mean 'align
> > to spline' or whatever it's usually called.  For some reason I was
> > envisioning
> > this:
> >
> >        Blah blah blah blah
> >        blah blah blah blah
> >                blah
> >
> > LOL.  I need more sleep.  You probably mean this:
> >
> >        Blah blah blah blah  |  Blah blah blah blah
> >        blah blah blah blah  |  blah blah blah blah
> >                       blah  |  blah
>
> Nope, the first. But let's not go there... if the few words
> so far didn't suffice, more it's not worth :)
>
> > I don't justify text anyway,
>
> I don't either. Even when well done I don't find it good to
> read; it's more a "looks good from far enough away that you
> can't read anyway" feature.
>
> > Captions suck too.  
>
> Oh, yes, I'm all with you on this.
>
> > What I do is create a new table style.  
>
> I've had reasonable success with placing pictures and their
> captions into a frame.
>
> Gerhard