XLS woes

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Hi all;

I have found that I am unable to open the XLS documents generated by
LedgerSMB.  I have endeavored to fix this in the current framework to
no avail.  I think the best course of action is to drop XLS as a
supported format and look for a replacement that Excel users can use.

There are a few options here that occur to me and I wanted to get
feedback.  Obviously we already have two formats that Excel can read
(ODS and CSV).  The templates for ODS can use some work (I think
Seneca designed the outlines of ODS for testing purposes back when she
did this work).

I think that XLS format is a bit redundant as long as we advertise
that ODS, Gnumeric, etc. can be read in Excel and forms a true
spreadsheet.  Removing (albeit broken) XLS support would mean fewer
points of testing, as well.  However there is also the question of
whether we should also offer a sort of generic tabular XML for reports
in 1.4 and pricelists in 1.3 and 1.4.  This would also be usable in
Excel from what I have read, and it might have other uses as well.

What do people here think?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers