Re: [Gretl-users] Opening a spreadsheet file
On Tue, 8 Sep 2009, Henrique wrote:
According to Gretl Command Reference:
When opening a spreadsheet file (Gnumeric, Open Document or XLS), you may
give up to three
additional parameters following the filename. First, you can select a
particular worksheet within
the file. This is done either by giving its (1-based) number, using the
syntax, e.g., --sheet=2, or, if
you know the name of the sheet, by giving the name in double quotes, as in
--sheet="MacroData".
When I try to use the syntax --sheet="dados (previs�o)", I get the following
error: Error executing script: halting. My
file is a Excel spreadsheet and I�m getting this problem on both Windows XP
and Mac OS/X. What can I do to fix this?
Take a wild guess! How about: the encoding of the non-ASCII
characters you enter in gretl (which is always UTF-8) does not
match the encoding inside the spreadsheet file (which could be
anything, unless you're using a standards-compliant spreadsheet
format such as ODS).
A word to the wise: if you want filenames, and names of objects
inside files such as sheets within a "workbook", to be portable,
then use ASCII characters only for such names. We programmers
will try our best to figure out what encodings we're looking at,
and to recode appropriately, but this is not easy in general, and
is sometimes extremely difficult if not impossible.
If everyone used UTF-8 this wouldn't be an issue, but they don't.
And Microsoft in particular uses a hodge-podge of non-standard
encodings they made up themselves.
Allin Cottrell