Description: ------------ Many of the functions in this package provide inadequate description of their arguments. For example, the worksheet->write() function should tell you to get a format with workbook->addFormat(). I managed to divine this from the examples, but precision is nice. Other functions have worse problems. For example setColor says to use a string for the color name, but does not provide a list or reference for valid names. Or to use a numeric value in the range 8-64, without any specification of what those values mean. Similarly for setAlign. I'm guessing that "left", "center", "right" are allowed, in addition to "merge". If there are any others, they should be listed. (currency? date/time?) And how to use "setMerge" (or setAlign("merge")) should be on those pages. Again, I'm doing guesswork from the examples, but what exactly are the semantics? Will all cells formatted with the same Format object be merged? Or all adjacent cells formatted with _any_ Format object that specifies "merge"? If the latter, is there any way to get two adjacent sets of merged cells that don't merge together?

To which package are you referring to, please?

Package Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer, but I recommend reviewing the docs for as many packages as you can spare time for. Or if you need help, I might spend a few evenings just looking for documentation problems. I ran across these problems because I was hoping to use the package to create Excel spreadsheets. But when I started using it, I discovered that it depends on COM. That means I could use it on my (Windows) desktop, but not on the (Linux) server where we deploy our webpages.

Sure, if you can allocate some time to review the manual, feel free to open bugs for any mistakes you find.

Could you please list the methods that you found to be documented inaccurate? I don't have time to look through all of them.

I'm not sure if I was looking in the wrong place, or the documentation has been updated. But now I find good documentation for most of the functions. The only exceptions: setMerge/setAlign("merge"): which cells get merged? A couple of examples would be useful. setColor: what is the meaning of the numeric values that are required to be in the range 8-64? For that matter, why that particular range?

Oh, and with regard to my comment on 2005-09-30 18:57 UTC, I note that the package has been updated to no longer require COM. So next time I need to build a worksheet I will use Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer instead of the kludge I built last time: write the data and format info into a text file, then parse the text file with a JSP using the jxl package to build the spreadsheet. Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer will be cleaner, I think, and I won't need any intermediate files!

The following patch has been added/updated: Patch Name: setColor Revision: 1250066535 URL: http://pear.php.net/bugs/patch-display.php?bug=5403&patch=setColor&revision=1250066535&display=1

The following patch has been added/updated: Patch Name: setMerge Revision: 1250066561 URL: http://pear.php.net/bugs/patch-display.php?bug=5403&patch=setMerge&revision=1250066561&display=1

The following patch has been added/updated: Patch Name: setColor Revision: 1250082853 URL: http://pear.php.net/bugs/patch-display.php?bug=5403&patch=setColor&revision=1250082853&display=1

The following patch has been added/updated: Patch Name: setColor Revision: 1250250201 URL: http://pear.php.net/bugs/patch-display.php?bug=5403&patch=setColor&revision=1250250201&display=1

I applied your setcolor patch after still fixing some CS issues. But setMerge absolutely does not apply - the patch fails really bad. Could you please make the diff against the current svn of setmerge.xml? And the XML ID of the example is wrong - for bgcolor! Original: http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pear/peardoc/trunk/en/package/fileformats/spreadsheet-excel-writer/spreadsheet-excel-writer-format/setmerge.xml?view=markup Patch: http://pear.php.net/bugs/patch-display.php?bug_id=5403&patch=setMerge&revision=latest

This bug has been fixed in SVN. If this was a documentation problem, the fix will appear on pear.php.net by the end of next Sunday (CET). If this was a problem with the pear.php.net website, the change should be live shortly. Otherwise, the fix will appear in the package's next release. Thank you for the report and for helping us make PEAR better. I merged the patch myself to get this going.