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- <sect1 id="sect-dataentryextern">
- <title>Obtaining Data from External Sources</title>
-
- <para>
- Data are commonly obtained from external sources such as from
- other files, either in a spreadsheet format or in delimited text
- format, from other applications using the mouse to copy and paste
- data or from external applications such as databases or internet
- data streams.
- </para>
-
- <sect2 id="sect-dataentryextern-files">
- <title>Obtaining Data from External Files</title>
-
- <para>
- Data which already exist in an external file can be imported
- into a workbook first by opening the file into a separate
- instance of <application>gnumeric</application> and and then by
- copying the relevant data into the desired worksheet.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Data contained in external files in the formats of several other
- spreadsheet applications can be opened by
- <application>gnumeric</application>.
- <application>Gnumeric</application> can open files in
- <application>Applix</application> (TM) format, GNU
- <application>Oleo</application> format, Lotus
- <application>123</application> (TM) format, Microsoft
- <application>Excel</application> (TM) format,
- <application>Multiplan</application> (TM) format, OpenOffice
- <application>Calc</application> or StarOffice
- <application>Calc</application> (TM) format, <application>Plan
- Perfect</application> (TM) format, <application>Quatro
- Pro</application> (TM) format, <application>sc</application> and
- <application>XSpread</application> format or in the
- <application>Xbase</application> format.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Data contained in external text files which are formatted in
- well defined ways can also be opened by
- <application>gnumeric</application>.
- <application>Gnumeric</application> can open files formatted in
- Data Interchange Format, formatted as HTML tables, or formatted
- in text formats such as comma separated values or tab delimited
- records. The opening of text format files is configurable by the
- user so that text files which contain data formatted in a wide
- variety of schemes can be imported correctly into
- <application>gnumeric</application>. Obtaining data from these
- files is explained in detail in the section titled <xref
- linkend="sect-file-open" />.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Data which are opened into a separate instance of
- <application>gnumeric</application> can be copied and pasted
- into the current worksheet with the copy and paste commands as
- explained in <xref linkend="sect-movecopy-cutandpaste" />.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2 id="sect-dataentryextern-cutnpaste">
- <title>Obtaining Data by Cut and Paste</title>
-
- <para>
- Data can be obtained from other
- <application>Gnumeric</application> workbooks or other
- applications using the mouse to copy data and paste them into a
- worksheet. This is explained below in the section titled <xref
- linkend="sect-movecopy-xclipboard" />.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
-
- <sect2 id="sect-datasource-database">
- <title>Getting Data from a Database</title>
-
- <para>
- This has not yet been written.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
- <sect2 id="sect-datasource-stream">
- <title>Getting Data from an Internet Data Stream</title>
-
- <para>
- <application>Gnumeric</application> has been connected to
- external data sources such as stock quotation service data
- streams using an experimental plugin. This requires the ability
- to write programming code. Information on extending
- <application>gnumeric</application> by developing plugins can be
- found in the section called <xref
- linkend="sect-extending-plugins"/> and the actual computer
- source code can be found in the directory
- <literal>gnumeric/plugins/sample_datasource/</literal> of
- either a distribution of <application>gnumeric</application> or
- in a code checkout from the concurrent versioning system (CVS)
- repository.
- </para>
-
- </sect2>
-
-
- </sect1>
-
-