hi,

XQuery is better for this task - you can try eXist
(http://exist.sourceforge.net/) for data retrieving.

Look like it capable for zip-files processing (odt&docx files is zip-arhives)

With best wishes,
Slav

P.S. About namespaces - XPath 2.0 support * for namespace prefixes -
so you can use select="//*:table-cell | //*:c" but i think this is not
very good idea

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 12:46 AM, Jay Bryant <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi, Ronnie
>
> I've done quite a bit of XSLT work against both OpenOffice and Excel, and
> what you describe is certainly possible.
>
> If you want to run them together (hard to imagine the case where you would),
> you'd do:
>
> <xsl:value-of select="path/to/your/column[string-length(.) &gt; 20]"/>
>
> If you want each value on its own line, you could do:
>
> <xsl:template match="path/to/your/column[string-length(.) &gt; 20]">
> <xsl:value-of select="."/><xsl:text>
> </xsl:text>
> </xsl:template>
>
> or
>
> <xsl:for-each select="path/to/your/column[string-length(.) &gt; 20]">
> <xsl:value-of select="."/><xsl:text>
> </xsl:text>
> </xsl:for-each>
>
> If you need to process the same nodes with some other template as well, you
> can add a mode to one or the other template.
>
> Remember that both Excel and OpenOffice have multiple namespaces, so your
> path statement will be much longer, but that's the general idea.
>
> (I didn't test any of that, so it might suffer from a typo or something.)
>
> HTH
>
> Jay Bryant
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronnie Royston" <rhroyston@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 3:34 PM
> Subject: [xsl] XPath Against OpenXML and OpenOffice Spreadsheets?
>
>
>> All I need to do is retrieve the string value of every cell of column
>> "A" whose string length is greater than 20 characters in length.
>>
>> Anyone know how to use XPath to retrieve this from an Excel 2007 file?
>> What about getting these values from OpenOffice.org's CALC
>> spreadsheet via XPath?
>>
>> Regarding the OpenXML - I've been all over MSDN and it appears to
>> require an understanding of .rels files and convoluted mappings
>> between different sub-files???  I know I can use ADO and Microsoft's
>> Jet Provider to read from an Excel file (and just about anything else)
>> but I thought that using pure XML technologies would be much cooler.
>>
>> Is XQuery a better fit for this task?
>>
>> Even a hint of where to go and look would be appreciated.
>>
>> - Ronnie