jmcnamara <jmcnam...@cpan.org>

If you are reporting a bug in Spreadsheet::WriteExcel then here are
some pointers.

1) Provide information on your system, version of perl and module
versions. The following program will generate everything that is
required. Put this information in your bug report.

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w

    print "\n    Perl version   : $]";
    print "\n    OS name        : $^O";
    print "\n    Module versions: (not all are required)\n";

    my @modules = qw(
                      Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
                      Parse::RecDescent
                      File::Temp
                      OLE::Storage_Lite
                      IO::Stringy
                    );

    for my $module (@modules) {
        my $version;
        eval "require $module";

        if (not $@) {
            $version = $module->VERSION;
            $version = '(unknown)' if not defined $version;
        }
        else {
            $version = '(not installed)';
        }

        printf "%21s%-24s\t%s\n", "", $module, $version;
    }

    __END__

2) If your version of Spreadsheet::WriteExcel isn't the latest then
you should probably upgrade it (or at least test on a system with an
upgraded version).

3) Say if you tested with Excel, OpenOffice, Gnumeric or something
else. Say which version of that application you used.

4) Create a small example program that demonstrates your problem. This
is the very important. The program should be as small as possible. A
few lines of codes are worth tens of lines of text when trying to
describe a bug.

Here are some examples of good bug reports:

    http://groups.google.com/group/spreadsheet-writeexcel/browse_frm/thre...

    http://groups.google.com/group/spreadsheet-writeexcel/browse_frm/thre...

In general the more effort that you put into making a bug report the
easier it will be to analyse and the quicker you will get a response.

John.
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