COFE.xlt Availability

[nrgeng]

I am a first-time user of the COCO forum. My questions may from time-to-time show my ignorance. I hope to learn by asking questions so here is my first-ever question.

The COFE.xlt template for Microsoft Excel is an important asset for the COCO suite of programs. I would like to use it. The COCO download utility ran on my computer with a message that Microsoft Excel was not found on the host computer so COFE.xlt would not be loaded.

The Apache Software Foundation supports Apache OpenOffice 3.4, which is "the original open source office productivity suite designed for professional and consumer use." Since the spreadsheet in OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft Excel (footnote 1), why not modify the COCO download utility to load COFE.xlt if it finds either OpenOffice or Microsoft Excel on the host computer?

Since both COCO and Apache OpenOffice are open standard, why not unite them as I have described above?

1 Based on my personal experience over several years of use with the old version of OpenOffice developed by Oracle, I seamlessly read and write .xls files among the computers on my office intranet regardless of the spreadsheet software company.

[jasper]