1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
|
<sect1 id="sect-files-overview">
<title>Files in Gnumeric</title>
<!-- TODO: move the "understanding the filesystem" from 'opening' to here. -->
<para>
&gnum; stores its information by creating files and re-opening
these files during a future session. Saving information to files
also allows a user to send the information to others.
</para>
<para>
The default file format for &gnum; is based on the eXtensible
Markup Language (XML). By default, files are saved as text files,
consisting of XML, which are then compressed using the library of
the <application>gzip</application> program. The extension for
&gnum; files is <literal>.gnumeric</literal> on platforms which
support file extensions of any size, <literal>.gnum</literal> for
systems which restrict extensions to four letters, or
<literal>.gnm</literal> for systems which restrict extensions to
three letters.
</para>
<para>
&gnum; can also open or save files in a number of other file
formats. The project prides itself for the work reverse
engineering and supporting the file formats used by Microsoft
Excel. &gnum; can use the Excel file format as if it were the
native file format, meaning that &gnum; can store and retrieve
essentially every aspect of a worksheet using the Excel
format. Similarly, &gnum; supports the OASIS Open Document Format
for Office Applications (ODF 1.2) file format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd
1:2012) as well as the ECMA 376 2nd Edition file format (ISO/IEC
29500:2008) as if they were the native format.
</para>
<warning>
<para>
&gnum; cannot delete files from the file system. &gnum; can open
existing files and create new files but cannot delete files once
they are created. Files can be deleted using a file browser such
as <application>Nautilus</application> on the GNOME desktop or
using the command-line program <application>rm</application>.
</para>
</warning>
<note>
<para>
This chapter discusses working with actual files. It is also
possible to import data into &gnum; using the clipboard by
copying either text or html table information in another program
and then pasting the resulting data into a worksheet. See <xref
linkend="sect-movecopy-xclipboard"/> for details.
</para>
</note>
<para>
Text files are often used to store data, using many different
systems to structure the data such as using commas, tabs or spaces
to separate values. &gnum; features a flexible system that enables
users to define exactly the structure of the text file to be
imported or exported.
</para>
<para>
&gnum; can be integrated with an email client to allow files to be
sent directly as attachments to an electronic mail message.
</para>
<para>
&gnum; also features a command-line tool called
<application>ssconvert</application> to convert files between any
of the file formats which it supports.
</para>
</sect1>
|