> Hi All,

>     it's been a while since my last "announcement"... Anyway, I am happy
> to announce the birth of my latest child, XLSGrid.

> Source code:

> http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/Zipped/XLSGrid.zip

> Screenshots:

> (XLSGrid standalone)
> http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/Softwares/XLSGrid_1.png

> (XLSGrid against Excel, same file)
> http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/Softwares/XLSGrid_3.png

> @Robin and other wxGrid gurus (which group I am not part of,
> unfortunately), a couple of questions at the end of the message. Any
> suggestion is more than welcome.

> @Warning: XLSGrid **requires** the xlrd package from:

> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd

> @Warning: XLSGrid has been tested on Windows Vista/Windows 7 with wxPython
> 2.8.11 unicode and Python 2.5, and wxPython 2.9.2.1 unicode and Python 2.7.

> So, what is XLSGrid?

> XLSGrid is a class based on `wx.grid.Grid` that can be used to faithfully
> reproduce the appearance of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (one worksheet
> per every instance of XLSGrid).

> XLSGrid is a completely owner-drawn control, and it relies on the power of
> wx.grid.PyGridTableBase and wx.grid.PyGridCellRenderer to draw the cell
> content. For this reasons (and for some others, see the TODOs section),
> it will work efficiently only for relatively small Excel files.

> *NOTE*: On Windows, it is **strongly** recommended to install Mark
> Hammonds' `pywin32` package:

> http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

> This will allow you to perfectly reproduce the appearance of the Excel
> worksheet in your instance of XLSGrid.

> *WARNING*: If Mark Hammonds' `pywin32` package is not available, the
> formatting capabilities of XLSGrid are severely limited; for instance,
> you won't probably get the exact WYSIWYG between the Excel spreadsheet
> and XLSGrid.

> *WARNING*: XLSGrid can only read Excel `.xls` files, not the newer
> versions
> `.xlsx` generated by Office 2007/2010. If you have a `.xlsx` file, you will
> need to save it in 1997-2003 Office compatibility mode.

> Currently this class provides a read-only subclass of `wx.grid.Grid`, with
> the following formatting features already implemented:

> * Cell background: support for any cell background colour and fill pattern
>   (hatching) in the Excel default set. There currently is no support for
>   gradient shading inside a cell as `xlrd` doesn't report this information.

> * Cell borders: support for all the border types and colours exposed by
>   Excel (left, top, bottom, right and diagonal borders, thin, double,
>   thick, ect... line styles).

> * Cell text: support for all kind of fonts (except strike-through, but this
>   is a bug in wxWidgets), and font colours. As a subset of text/font
>   capabilities, XLSGrid supports the following features found in Excel:

>   - Horizontal alignment: left, right, centered, left-indented;
>   - Vertical alignment: left, right, centered;
>   - Text direction: left-to-right or right-to-left;
>   - Text-wrapping: wrapping long texts inside a grid cell;
>   - Shrink-to-fit: text font is reduced until the text can fit in a
> one-line
>     inside the grid cell;
>   - Text rotation: text can be rotated from +90 to -90 degrees.

> * Cell text appearance: if you are using Mark Hammonds' `pywin32` package,
>   the text displayed in the XLSGrid cells has exactly the same appearance
>   as in the Excel spreadsheet.

> * Cell comments (notes): if you are using Mark Hammonds' `pywin32` package,
>   cell comments (notes) are extracted and you will see a small red triangle
>   at the top-right corner of any cell containing a comment. Hovering with
>   the mouse on that cell will pop-up a "comment-window" displaying the
>   comment text (the comment window is based on wx.lib.agw.supertooltip).

> * Cell hyperlinks: starting from version 0.7.2 (SVN), `xlrd` is capable of
>   extracting hyperlinks from Excel cells. This will be appropriately
> displayed
>   in XLSGrid with a cursor changing and a tooltip on that cell.

> * Cell merging: merged cells in the Excel spreadsheet will be correctly
>   handled by XLSGrid.

> * Columns and rows sizes: XLSGrid calculates the correct rows and columns
>   sizes based on the Excel reported values in characters. The calculations
>   are based on the default width of the text in 1/256 of the width of the
>   zero character, using default Excel font (first FONT record in the Excel
>   file).

> Questions:

> 1) I have this piece of code in the XLSGrid implementation (which is
> currently commented out):

>         # Commented-out section
>         # if self.attr is not None:
>         #     self.attr.IncRef()
>         #     return self.attr

>         attr = gridlib.GridCellAttr()

>         attr.SetRenderer(XLSRenderer(self))

>         attr.SetSize(*self.size)
>         attr.SetOverflow(True)
>         self.attr = attr

>         return self.attr

> I though I could store a wx.grid.GridCellAttr inside a class member, but
> every time I try to un-comment that section I get this from wxPython 2.8.11:

> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "E:\MyProjects\temp\XLSGrid.py", line 1553, in GetAttr
>     return cell.GetAttr()
>   File "E:\MyProjects\temp\XLSGrid.py", line 1356, in GetAttr
>     self.attr.IncRef()
>   File "C:\Python25\lib\site-packages\wx-2.8-msw-unicode\wx\grid.py", line
> 529, in IncRef
>     return _grid.GridCellAttr_IncRef(*args, **kwargs)
>  TypeError: in method 'GridCellAttr_IncRef', expected argument 1 of type
> 'wxGridCellAttr *'

> Or this one, in wxPython 2.9.2.1:

> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "E:\MyProjects\XLSGrid\xlsgrid.py", line 1553, in GetAttr
>     return cell.GetAttr()
>   File "E:\MyProjects\XLSGrid\xlsgrid.py", line 1356, in GetAttr
>     self.attr.IncRef()
>   File "c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\wx-2.9.2-msw\wx\_core.py", line 797,
> in IncRef
>     return _core_.RefCounter_IncRef(*args, **kwargs)
> TypeError: in method 'RefCounter_IncRef', expected argument 1 of type
> 'wxRefCounter *'

> Isn't self.attr an instance of GridCellAttr?!?? I explicitly create it in
> the code above!!

> 2) `wx.grid.Grid` seems to completely redraw itself at every resize event,
> even if the cell content has not changed and it has not been damaged.
> This happens also in the "MegaGrid" sample in the wxPython demo. Why is
> that? I thought that the undamaged/unchanged cells should just be skipped
> from refreshing. I have tried to add wx.CLIP_CHILDREN and
> wx.NO_FULL_REPAINT_ON_RESIZE on the parent window, to no avail.

> Enjoy, wxPython rules :-)

> Andrea.

> "Imagination Is The Only Weapon In The War Against Reality."
> http://xoomer.alice.it/infinity77/