I have long wanted to be able to create in-cell sparklines in OpenOffice calc. There are a few commercial tools to do this, but they are made for Excel, and also they are proprietary. I've put together enough of a solution to prove the concept. The idea is to create a font containing bars, lines, etc., and then an OpenOffice macro generates strings of characters in this font from the spreadsheet data.
To create the font, I used SVG, since it allows fairly simple specification of fonts. I generated the SVG using a Python script. I then used FontForge to convert the SVG font to a TrueType font.
Then I wrote some simple OpenOffice macros to generate characters in this font from the spreadsheet data.
To use it, install the font on your system, and import the macros into OpenOffice. Then, in a cell where you want a sparkline, do =SPARKLINES(cell range) for a line graph or SPARKBARS(cell range) for a bar graph.
This is pretty raw; like I said, it's just a proof of concept. I figured I'd go ahead and put it out there because I know there's a demand, and I'm hopeful that someone with a little more time to spend on it might be able to polish it up.
Update: This looks way better than my crude prototype.
Labels: openoffice, sparklines, spreadsheet
Hi
Thx for your proof of concept. It would be great, if you would continue with that project. I would appreciate it very much!
Hi Joe,
I've been working on sparklines too, made 2 fonts with bars and lines and an Excel example with some functions where I use them (VBA code open). My knowledge of OpenOffice plugins is very limited, but we could give it a try to transform these macros with the font into an OO plugin?
See: http://www.castoro.nl/port-rapp.html (bottom of the page, "HIER DOWNLOADEN")
Regards (for contact: find my email on my website),
Koen
This is a really good Joe, thanks for sharing.
Hi Joe,
I have an open source project for Sparklines on Excel. It is in VBA and maybe this could give you some ideas for an OO version.
Let me know if I can help..
Regards