# \[ANN\] ruby-ole-1.2.8 released!

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 8, 2008, 9:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409 "2008-10-08T09:58:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 9:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409/1 "2008-10-08T09:58:26Z")

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The new version of ruby-ole has been released!

ruby-ole is a library for read/write access to OLE2 structured storage  
files, such as those produced by Microsoft Office, eg \*.doc, \*.msg etc.  
It provides a simple filesystem style api.

Details at [http://ruby-ole.googlecode.com](http://ruby-ole.googlecode.com), or go straight to  
[http://ruby-ole.rubyforge.org/doc](http://ruby-ole.rubyforge.org/doc) for the RDoc.

Changes:

- Fixes multiple MBAT read/write support (for large OLE files).
- Better documentation.
- Easy access to meta data and simple mime type classification.
- Exposing the above through oletool
- More tests - now have 100% coverage.
- Cross platform bug fixes

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 4:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409/2 "2008-10-08T16:52:36Z")

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Very interesting. This is probably a ridiculous question, but is there  
a  
Windows dependency for this library? I’m itching for a library to write  
Excel files without having to resort to Windows. If I must use Windows  
and  
some OLE bridge, I’d be very excited if I could use copy-and-paste  
whilst  
generating Excel worksheets.

James H.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 12:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409/3 "2008-10-09T00:13:13Z")

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James H. wrote:

> Very interesting. This is probably a ridiculous question, but is there  
> a  
> Windows dependency for this library? I’m itching for a library to write  
> Excel files without having to resort to Windows. If I must use Windows  
> and  
> some OLE bridge, I’d be very excited if I could use copy-and-paste  
> whilst  
> generating Excel worksheets.
> 
> James H.

Hi James,

No there’s no windows dependency. If you’re looking for a library to  
write excel files though, “gem install spreadsheet-excel” - I’ve used it  
a bit and it works fairly well.

I’ve also written my own fairly limited excel writer (because i needed  
biff8) which I’ll release when I clean it up.

Aside from this though, you shouldn’t need to use copy & paste just to  
generate a spreadsheet using excel directly?

- Charles

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2008, 6:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-8-released/150409/4 "2008-10-10T18:45:37Z")

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> Aside from this though, you shouldn’t need to use copy & paste just to  
> generate a spreadsheet using excel directly?

One wouldn’t think so, but that seems to be the way the Windows Win32OLE  
library works. It’s quite shocking.

I’ll take a peak at your lib. Thanks!

James