Make spreadsheet save in human-readable format for version control

Question

Apparently Gnumeric's native file format is compressed xml.

Diffing binary files isn't easy, so you lose many of the advantages of version control.

Is it possible to get it to save (and load) its files in straight xml (or any other human readable format)?

Answer 1

Gnumeric's preferences allow you to set a compression level of 0 which results in uncompressed files.

Answer 2

gnumeric's ssconvert might be able to do the job. Will "Convert to xhtml" be helplful to you?

ssconvert -T Gnumeric_html:xhtml Book1.gnumeric  Book1.html

This command lists the filetypes gnumeric is able to export to:

ssconvert  --list-exporters

ID                           | Description
Gnumeric_lpsolve:lpsolve     | LPSolve Linear Program Solver
Gnumeric_glpk:glpk           | GLPK Linear Program Solver
Gnumeric_Excel:xlsx2         | MS Excel (tm) 2010 (ECMA 376 2nd edition (2008))
Gnumeric_Excel:xlsx          | MS Excel (tm) 2007 (ECMA 376 1st edition (2006))
Gnumeric_Excel:excel_dsf     | MS Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP & 5.0/95
Gnumeric_Excel:excel_biff7   | MS Excel (tm) 5.0/95
Gnumeric_Excel:excel_biff8   | MS Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP
Gnumeric_dif:dif             | Data Interchange Format (*.dif)
Gnumeric_sylk:sylk           | MultiPlan (SYLK)
Gnumeric_html:roff           | TROFF (*.me)
Gnumeric_html:latex_table    | LaTeX 2e (*.tex) table fragment
Gnumeric_html:latex          | LaTeX 2e (*.tex)
Gnumeric_html:xhtml_range    | XHTML range - for export to clipboard
Gnumeric_html:xhtml          | XHTML (*.html)
Gnumeric_html:html40frag     | HTML (*.html) fragment
Gnumeric_html:html40         | HTML 4.0 (*.html)
Gnumeric_html:html32         | HTML 3.2 (*.html)
Gnumeric_OpenCalc:odf        | ODF/OpenOffice with foreign elements (*.ods)
Gnumeric_OpenCalc:openoffice | ODF/OpenOffice without foreign elements (*.ods)
Gnumeric_stf:stf_csv         | Comma separated values (CSV)
Gnumeric_stf:stf_assistant   | Text (configurable)
Gnumeric_XmlIO:sax           | Gnumeric XML (*.gnumeric)
Gnumeric_pdf:pdf_assistant   | PDF export

Answer 3

there is no "non-compressed" option, i believe. I searched the documentation and the UI, no way. but you are no completely off, good comparison tools have so called 'converters', or even support un-gzipping on the fly when comparing.

The tool I work for, ECMerge, has a gzip converter, you just need gzip installed in your system path (or specify it by hand in the configuration screen), you will need to add *.gnumeric to the supported pattern for GZip converter and ECMerge will diff the gnumeric files content. There is no 'gzipped merge' though.