GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 705311
bubble plot: .gnumeric -> .xls -> .gnumeric round trip fails
Last modified: 2013-08-02 18:04:29 UTC
Created attachment 250650 [details] example bubble plot that cannot be exported then imported Example files can be found in this directory: http://www.av8n.com/physics/bugs/ Scenario: ssconvert fci-bubble.gnumeric fci-bubble.xls then ssconvert fci-bubble.xls fci-bubble2.gnumeric The original file fci-bubble.gnumeric works as expected, as desired. There are ordinary bubble plots, where each bubble has a specified X, Y, and diameter. In the munged file, fci-bubble2.gnumeric, the X-coordinates have vanished. Check the "data" in "series1" in either bubble plot. Asking gnumeric to read the .xls file directly produces the identical wrong result. Note: At the moment, I have no idea whether there is an export problem, an import problem, or both. I am trying to obtain more information about this. Workaround? None that I know of. Priority: Some of my colleagues are wedded to MSXL, and they expect me to send them a working .xls file.
John, would you please create an xls file in Excel with the features that are lost in the round trip and post that file together with an screenshot of how it looks in Excel? This would tell us whether it is is an import problem and whether and how xls supports those features.
Excel definitely does support bubble plots. For a screenshot and some discussion, see http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/06/adem/engin/excel/bubble_chart/ Gnumeric definitely suffers from import bugs, as you can see by importing the bubble-plot file from the Swarthmore site: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/06/adem/engin/excel/bubble_chart/bubble%20charts.xlsx The desired/expected result of such an import is a plot with the same appearance. Instead I observe several screenfuls of errors and warnings, and a plot that has the wrong appearance, including wrong-sized bubbles and missing labels. However, alas, that is probably not exactly the same problem as the bug I originally reported. I would not be surprised if there are export bugs as well as import bugs. I cannot readily ascertain whether the "missing X values" bug is an import bug or an export bug. I do not have excel installed. I am collaborating with some people who do use excel, but they are busy people and I would rather not ask them to get involved in debugging a product (gnumeric) that they do not use. If you have excel, you can easily check this for yourself, to separate import bugs from export bugs. The desired appearance of my bubble plot can be seen by using gnumeric to open the submitted .gnumeric file. The desired/expected export behavior is that excel should read the exported .xls file and produce a closely similar plot.
We do have at least an export issue (for the .xls format, exporting to .xlsx is very limited at the moment) sice calc does not open it correcly (all bubbles aligned on the diagonal).
OK, found the issue. This happens because the expression is not a range, but is scaled bubble!$G$9:$G$153*100/30 Does any body knows how excel displays the xls file (the Y values are also scaled)? Clearly, calc is unable to deal with such a formula in charts, so I can't use it to validate things.
Created attachment 250699 [details] Enhanced export Does this file opens nicely in excel?
I could try with xl2k, it just does not support such formulas in charts. I can't test with a more recent version. For now, just gnumeric seems to be able to correctly read this file.
This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Thank you for your bug report. Anyway such charts are not compatible with excel, the used formulas are not allowed in charts. At least we now round trip correctly in gnumeric, and I fixed the bubble size ration export.