Java News from Thursday, January 29, 2004

The Apache Jakarta Project has released POI 2.0, an open source Java library for "manipulating various file formats based upon Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document format. OLE 2 Compound Document Format based files include most Microsoft Office files such as XLS and DOC." Changes since 1.5 include:

• Improved support for non-english spreadsheets.
• Formula support
• Named cells and ranges
• Sheet reordering
• Zoom support
• Freeze and split panes
• Row and column headers
• Custom data formats
• Support for cloning objects
• Headers and footers
• Preservation of VBA macros when rewriting workbooks
• Support for hyperlinks by using cell formulas
• Custom palettes
• Custom properties