[Mono-list] System.IO.Package

[Edward Ned Harvey (mono)]

> From: mono-list-bounces at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-list-
> bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Maury Markowitz
> 
> Wow, fantastic answer!

Glad to help - but I want to emphasize the second part of that answer, which was, the Class Status page actually indicates the vast majority of Packaging is complete, so it really *might* be the case that it's totally usable to you.  There are definitely large sections of code and assemblies that haven't been updated in years because they haven't needed it - that shouldn't be the only indicator you look at.

So based on this thread, you have at least 3 possible solutions to consider - Packaging, Gembox, and Npoi (thanks to Martin).  Maybe more people will offer more suggestions.  I'm certain they're out there.


> The problem with Gembox (et al) is that they are Windows only (???) and the
> target of this effort is ultimately the iPad. The iPad has a grid view I can use,
> so I'm concentrating on the data side of things.

If you're still looking for more alternatives, I'd suggest posting a new thread here, focused specifically on that question.  Also post to the mono dev mailing list (a different set of people) and also go to the Xamarin support forums.  All these have different sets of people.  You never know where you'll get the best answers.

Assuming you pay for Xamarin Studio, email them support too.  You seriously never know.  Sometimes I get the best answer from Xamarin support, sometimes I get the best answer here on this list.

And stackoverflow.   And google.    ;-)


> So if Packaging is likely out, perhaps there is another solution to that
> problem? The real goal here is to open the XLSX - which is just a zip file full of
> XMLs - and then iterate over them one by one. These are potentially
> recursive (and are in the case of XLSX),

If it's really that simple, it sounds like standard zip libraries and xml classes could be used.  Is it really that simple?


> So does anyone know of a PCL/Mono compatible ZIP library along those
> lines?

Huh.  You might want to break this out to a separate thread, to get more attention on that specific question.  It might be getting drowned by all the tldr; of the current thread.

I know there's a .Net standard built-in zip class.  What is it...  GZipStream...  And if you search NuGet, there's about a zillion 3rd party compression libraries.  You have to be careful, as you've suggested, about platform compatibility.  I hate when I build something on ... for example ...  System.Data.Sqlite, only to discover it doesn't exist in Mono, and then rebuild it using Mono.Data.Sqlite only to discover it's not compatible with Windows...     ;-)   You get the idea.   (Tangent, after some effort I got Mono.Data.Sqlite working on windows, so we use that as a solution).