Reading matrices from Excel, CSV or formatted flat files

On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 04:04:36PM -0800, Richard Fateman wrote:
> If you really want to link excel to maxima more generally,
> e.g. from excel, send a range of data to maxima and get it
> back to excel, I would be very interested in learning of
> the application.
> 
> Because I can in fact connect them using COM.  See this paper..
> 
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/excel-lisp.pdf
> 

I recently had a slight urge to connect excel to 
an excellent graphing tool, dwscope or jscope  -- see www.mdsplus.org.
(I used to work with this group @ MIT) 
So this afternoon I did some poking around the web.

I've never hacked excel or the thing behind it, VBA -- I was shocked,
amused, and appalled in turn at the ease with which one can
wreak complete havoc using these tools.  MS has removed
the ability to call an arbitrary dll/entry from a spreadsheet
cell (worked in 97, not in 2000) but even in the current 2000 this facility
is available through VBA -- which, if i understand MS (not sure I want to) 
means this facility is available in all the office products 
including powerpoint.  So, next time you download a powerpoint presentation 
and click the little arrow for next slide, take a moment to wonder what is 
going to happen to your computer as a result of that click.

					Steve