Re: Use babel to import table data from OpenDocument spreadsheets?

[Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com>]

1. Give me a sample worksheet.

2. Give me the specific unoconv command that you used for converting the
   worksheet.

If you do (1) and (2), I will post a recipe.




James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com> writes:

> At Wed, 10 Jul 2013 09:20:25 +0530,
> Jambunathan K wrote:
>> James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > I found a utility, unoconv[1], which I can persuade to produce a
>> > tab-separated export of the first worksheet of an ODS document.
>> 
>> FYI, unoconv is an option provided by `org-odt-convert-processes'.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Okay... I finally had some time to come back to this task.
>
> While I do appreciate all the suggestions so far, unfortunately I have
> to admit that I'm still stuck. What I'd like to do now is run down
> what I know about it so far and put questions in the middle of that.
>
> 1. I have a LibreOffice ODS file, where the table to obtain will be in the first worksheet.
>
> 1a. I can use unoconv to get a tab-separated text table out of it, in a file on disk.
>
> 1b. I will need to invoke this synchronously in an emacs-lisp
> block. (shell-command ...) I guess, right?
>
>
> 2. I want the tab-separated text to be converted into an org-table, so
> that HTML export will turn it into an HTML table. This is where it
> becomes completely baffling to the novice.
>
> 2a. There's a function, org-table-import, which looks like it will do
> the job. It inserts the table contents at the point. I just can't find
> any examples online of the correct way to do this. I assume I will
> have to run an emacs-lisp source block. I had been thinking I could
> use ":exports results" with a #+call, supposing that I could write out
> the table text as a stream and those results would be put in place of
> the #+call in the export. But of course that doesn't make sense if
> org-table-import is significant for its side effect (modifying the
> buffer) rather than its result.
>
> 2b. So (I guess) I would have to use emacs-lisp to move the point to a
> specific location in the file before calling org-table-import
> (obviously not by character index, since I can't assume previous text
> will not change).
>
> QUESTION: What is the best way to do that?
>
> ^^ This is the point where I'm stuck. I really have no idea. Say I put
> in an org comment "# raw data here" -- how do I get the point to go to
> the line after that? How do I delete the entire old table before
> importing the new one? Working example, perhaps?
>
>
> Anyway, I'll be happy to write this up as a worg page after I get it
> working, as it seems to me this would be a fairly common need but the
> information is not easy to find.
>
> Thanks,
> hjh