Purpose and Goals

Many applications need to read and/or write data in the Excel file format. On the Windows platform, this can be acomplished by using Microsoft supplied API calls. Unfortunately these API's are not available for UNIX.

The Chicago project will create a platform independent C library, to read and write Excel files. It will be licensed under the GPL.

The goals of the Chicago project are:

1. Create a C library for reading and writing OLE data. (libOle)
2. Completely document the OLE file format
3. Create a C library for reading and writing Excel data. (libXls)
4. Completely document the Excel file format
5. Completely document the Excel Encryption Algorithm.

Project Components

libOle

This is a platform independent library, for reading and writing OLE files. The current code only supports reading OLE files. Support for writing OLE files, will come in the future.
  libOle provides a way to deal with the envelope that encloses Microsoft Excel data. It DOES NOT provide access to the data itself! That is the job of libXls, which is described below.

libXls

  This is a platform independent library, for reading and writing Microsoft Excel files. Code for reading Excel files, is in the process of being integrated into the Chicago project. See this page for more information.

Contributing to the Chicago Project

 If you would like to help the Chicago Project, please see the Developer page.

This is a Known Element Enterprises project.