An alpha release (a4) of version 0.6.1 of xlrd is now available from http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm and from the Cheeseshop (http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/xlrd).
What is xlrd? It's a small (download approx 0.1 Mb) pure-Python library for extracting information from Microsoft Excel (tm) files, anywhere Python 2.1 or later will run -- no need for Excel itself, nor COM, nor even Windows. Further info: follow the links on the home page. This release incorporates the functionality of 0.6.0 which was not released independently for various reasons including the need to push ahead with the 0.6.1 functionality. New in 0.6.0: facility to access named cell ranges and named constants (Excel UI: Insert/Name/Define). New in 0.6.1: extracts formatting information for cells (font, "number format", background, border, alignment and protection) and rows/ columns (height/width etc). To save memory and time for those who don't need it, this information is extracted only if formatting_info=1 is supplied to the open_workbook() function. The cell records BLANK and MULBLANKS which contain no data, only formatting information, will continue to be ignored in the default (no formatting info) case. There have been several changes made to handle anomalous files (written by 3rd party software) which Excel will open without complaint, but failed with xlrd, usually because an assertion fails or xlrd deliberately raises an exception. Refer to HISTORY.html for details. These have been changed to accept the anomaly either silently or with a NOTE message or a WARNING message, as appropriate. Many thanks are due to Simplistix Ltd (http://www.simplistix.co.uk). for funding the new functionality in 0.6.1. BTW, Feedback: general discussion on the python-excel newsgroup (sign up at http://groups.google.com.au/group/python-excel?lnk=li&hl=en) or mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] preferably with [xlrd] in the message subject. Cheers, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
